A floor crew pull steel pipe out of a natural gas well in the Barnett Shale of Fort Worth, Texas that is owned by Chesapeake Energy Corporation.

The American shale drillers that have upended the energy industry will capture much of the growth in oil demand in the coming years, OPEC forecasts in a new report.

But after years of booming U.S. production and flat output from OPEC, the tables will turn, the producer group says.

The forecast, released Tuesday, signals that OPEC believes its battle for oil-market share against U.S. shale will persist for years to come.

The U.S. shale revolution paved the way for a three-year oil price downturn that sent crude spiraling from more than $100 a barrel in 2014 to about $60 today. That has piled pressure on the oil-dependent economies of OPEC nations and forced a round of production cuts this year.

The forecast for oil demand looks stronger than it did last year, according to OPEC. The group's prognosticators raised their projections for oil demand in 2022 by 2.2 million barrels a day in this year's World Oil Outlook report.