The oil market has a bigger problem than a slowing China – India

INDIA is the stuff of dreams for Opec and Big Oil: a rapidly developing nation of nearly 1.5 billion people where petroleum consumption is still in its infancy. It’s the next China – so the theory goes. Perhaps one day, but in 2025 it’s still the stuff of dreams.

For years, energy economists have talked about “structural tailwinds” – including benign demographics, a burgeoning middle class and accelerating urbanisation and industrialisation – that would propel Indian oil demand.

Those phenomena turned China into the world’s engine of petroleum demand growth (along with everything else) for a quarter century. From 2000 to 2025, the Asian giant added an average of 485,000 barrels a day every year to global consumption. Now, the boom is ending.