The future of global oil demand is often framed as a debate about electric vehicles, energy transition policy, and 2050 forecasts.
Those debates matter. But they can cause us to miss something more immediate.
Over the past decade:
➤ Asia Pacific accounted for roughly 80% of all global oil demand growth
➤ The rest of the world, in aggregate, was nearly flat
➤ Within Asia Pacific, China alone drove the majority of that growth
That concentration was never a problem as long as China kept growing.
But in 2024, China’s oil consumption declined for the first time since 1990.
The time before that was 1980.
One data point isn’t a trend. It might be an outlier.
But the structural forces pressing against Chinese demand growth are real and deliberate.
And no other country is positioned to replace China’s role at anything close to the same scale.
This week’s Foundations of Energy post explores the full Asia Pacific oil picture: production, consumption, demand growth, and what it all means for the decades ahead.
If you want to understand where global oil demand is going, this is a good onramp.
Read the article here.
