This year, the International Energy Agency expects oil demand to grow by 1.4 million barrels a day, to 86.3 million barrels a day, or 1.7 percent higher than last year, mostly reversing a drop of 1.3 million barrels a day in 2009 and 300,000 barrels a day the previous year.

But none of this expected growth will come from consumers in the United States, Europe and Japan. For industrialized nations, which account for 60 percent of global oil demand, energy-saving measures, government subsidies for renewable fuels and declining populations mean that oil demand is unlikely ever to grow again.

“We’ve really hit peak demand in developed nations, and so the name of the game now is China,” said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. “In terms of the dynamism of the market, the vector of demand will be China and the dynamo of supplies is Iraq.”

More than ever, what happens in the next few years to China will be central to the direction of the oil markets. From 2003 to 2008, more than half the growth in oil demand came from China, according to analysts at Raymond James. Even last year, when demand in most of the world shrank, China was the only major economy to see strong growth, with its oil consumption rising 5.7 percent. This year, analysts expect Chinese oil demand to grow at an even faster pace.

In 2009, more cars were sold in China than in the United States, something most analysts did not expect to see before 2018 or 2020, said Mr. Yergin. If China continues at its current pace, he said, it will be consuming more oil than the United States by the end of the decade.

“That will happen unless they step up on the gas in terms of energy efficiency and electric cars,” Mr. Yergin said.

At the Davos conference in January, Tony Hayward, the BP chief executive, summed up the industry’s sentiment: “The challenge is how to actually meet this growing demand for oil and to keep the lid on prices.”