A (very) early look at the oil market in 2025

THE 2024 oil market is still in its infancy, but attention is already shifting to 2025. If the global economy is starting to abandon its oil addiction, as optimists contend, the first signs of the energy transition should emerge by next year. Spoiler alert: early indications are that the beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel industry remains elusive.

Every January, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistics arm of the US Department of Energy, is the first public forecaster to release its oil market predictions for the following year. On Tuesday (Jan 9), the EIA said it anticipates that the global oil demand will grow by 1.2 million barrels a day in 2025, compared with the 1.4 million barrels a day expected in 2024.

Despite the world agreeing at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai last year to move towards “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, the reality is that the process will take decades.