There will come a time in the future when oil demand stops growing, but recent forecasts putting that date in 2023, five years from today, should be viewed with skepticism.
Long-term forecasts about oil market behavior are notoriously wrong and often come back to embarrass those who make aggressive calls. Recall the “peak oil” supply projections that permeated markets a decade ago, how did that work? The industry now finds itself in an unprecedented “era of abundance” thanks the prolific shale revolution. The supply picture is so robust that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and some non-OPEC partners, led by Russia, have deliberately kept 1.8 million barrels a day of production off the market since late 2016 to prevent global crude prices from crashing.
