Higher vehicle efficiency and electric cars penetration, higher fuel prices, and lower economic growth may lead to a global oil demand peak as soon as in 2024, Goldman Sachs said on Monday in a research note on refining.

“In our extreme case, we project peak oil demand in 2024,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in the note, as quoted by Reuters.

The electric vehicle fleet is expected to increase to 83 million vehicles by 2030, from 2 million cars last year, according to Goldman.



Vehicle efficiency and higher penetration of EVs are expected to slow down demand growth over the next 10-15 years, with oil demand growth at 1.2 percent between this year and 2022, then slowing to 0.7 percent by 2025, and to 0.4 percent in 2030, Goldman Sachs said.

But emerging markets economic growth, which will be led by India, may push the reaching of peak demand to until 2030, the bank’s analysts reckon.

By 2030, the transport sector is expected to give way to petrochemicals as the key driver of oil demand growth, according to Goldman Sachs.

Slowing demand growth and refining capacity additions could lead to a surplus of refined oil products in the next five years, the analysts further noted. Related: Trump May Have Unintentionally Killed U.S. Nuclear

“Refinery closures may occur in developed markets, with new capacity opening near demand centers,” Reuters quoted the note as saying.

While other oil products will raise their shares in the global oil demand mix, the share of gasoline and diesel is expected to stagnate until 2030, according to Goldman.

While Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, for example, continues to reiterate that peak oil demand is nowhere in sight and the world can’t just cut oil off, western oil supermajors have some predictions for oil demand to peak in the 2030s or in the 2040s, depending on EVs penetration, the advance of renewables, and global economic growth.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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