Publishing its annual Energy Outlook, UK energy major BP announced it expects oil demand to peak in 2025 already at 102 million b/d in both its “Current Trajectory” and “Net Zero” scenarios, maintaining a bearish outlook on fuel consumption.

BP warns of a “disorderly” energy transition. The world is shifting too slowly from fossil fuels to avoid severe climate change, BP said in its annual Energy Outlook. If this trend continues to the early 2040s, the world may have exhausted its so-called “carbon budget,” Bloomberg said.

Global oil demand reached unprecedented levels of more than 100 million barrels a day in 2023, as travel and transport continued to recover from their slump during the Covid pandemic and emerging economies increased their intake of petrochemical feedstocks. On the current trajectory, consumption will remain near this level until 2035, then start declining thanks to the adoption of electric vehicles and improving fuel efficiency, eventually reaching 75 million a day in 2050. In order to reach the global climate goal of net zero carbon emissions, oil use would have to plunge 70% by 2050 to around 30 million barrels a day, BP projected.

IEA sees global demand weakness. The IEA reported the lowest quarterly increase in global demand in over a year as consumption rose by 710,000 b/d in Q2, saying that China’s stellar growth is coming to an end and cutting the 2025 outlook further to 970,000 b/d. 

/BP, OilPrice, Bloomberg/