This year could be pivotal for determining the trajectory of future global oil demand, after major downward revisions in 2024. But making sense of the outlook in the fog of economic uncertainty from US tariff threats and geopolitical tensions, led by conflicts in the Mideast and Ukraine, is no easy task. Current market indicators point to strong prompt demand, which is not surprising given that the market is in its peak summer season. But there are, in parallel, some structural changes that could point to sustained deterioration in demand growth in 2025 and beyond, below the historical annual average of around 1.2 million b/d. Certainly, demand in the early months of this year appears to have gotten off to a slow start. For the first five months of 2025, Energy Intelligence estimates year-on-year demand growth of just 300,000 barrels per day. Demand would need to stay elevated at peak summer levels of about 104.4 million b/d through the end of the year to reach the full-year growth forecast of 800,000 b/d. By most accounts, demand disappointed in 2024, with forecasts steadily ratcheted down through the year. Energy Intelligence now estimates 2024 growth at just 730,000 b/d due largely to a dramatic slowdown in China, the primary driver of global growth over the past 15 years. This estimate could be revised higher, given recent rethinking of some historical demand data for 2022-24. A survey of five major forecasters — Energy Intelligence, the International Energy Agency (IEA), Opec, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies — sees 2025 demand growth averaging 1 million b/d, although forecasts vary greatly between 720,000 b/d and 1.3 million b/d, with the IEA at the bottom and Opec at the top.
