Global oil demand will likely take another year or so to return to pre-pandemic levels—by late 2021 or early 2022, energy expert and IHS Markit vice chairman Daniel Yergin told Al Arabiya English in a video interview on Monday.
Yergin’s expectations for oil demand are roughly in line with the forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and OPEC, which don’t expect annual oil demand to return to the pre-COVID levels next year, despite the projected rise compared to this year’s slump.
Continued low demand for jet fuel will account for 80 percent of next year’s 3.1-million-bpd gap in oil demand compared to pre-pandemic levels, the IEA said in its monthly Oil Market Report earlier this month. OPEC also revised down its oil demand projections for this year and next in its Monthly Oil Market Report for December, expecting 2021 oil demand at 95.89 million bpd, down 410,000 bpd from its projection of 96.3 million bpd from November.
IHS Markit’s Yergin doesn’t see the biggest disruption on the oil market as either bringing forward or delaying peak oil demand.
“At the end of the day, it won’t have much impact on peak oil demand, which I still think will be around 2030 or so,”Yergin told Al Arabiya English.
According to IHS Markit, shale production will stay relatively unchanged at around 11 million bpd until late 2021, before it starts rising, but it will increase at a much more moderate pace.
