According to BP, by 2035 demand for crude oil may peak. By 2040, the world’s energy supply pie will be sliced equally between oil, coal, natural gas, and renewables, according to the oil giant’s predictions. This new projection pushes up peak oil demand by a half decade or more. Christopher Alessi reports:
The world’s appetite for oil and other liquid fuels could continue to grow until around 2035, hitting 110.3 million barrels a day—compared with 95 million barrels a day in 2015—before plateauing and falling off in the run up to 2040, the British oil-and-gas giant said Tuesday in the main future scenario, releasing its annual energy outlook.
Peak demand could represent a potential reckoning for energy companies that had grown accustomed to crude consumption growing almost every year for over a century. Already, BP, Royal Dutch ShellPLC and other companies have been investing more in natural gas, which has become a vital fuel for producing electricity, and experimenting with renewable production.
“The outlook here shows that the world is going to need all forms of energy,” BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said at a news conference Tuesday. “Gas has to be part of the transition, if not a destination fuel” for lowering carbon emissions.
BP’s outlook shows peak-oil demand coming more quickly than it has forecast in the past. Until now, the company has said crude demand wouldn’t stop growing until the 2040s.
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