BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 7. In 2023, Fitch Solutions forecasts global oil demand growth to drop to 1.5 percent, as compared to 2.4 percent in 2022, Trend reports with reference to the company.
The report from Fitch Solutions reveals that with a few exceptions, global mobility has returned to its pre-pandemic levels and, excluding China, the growth in consumption this year will depend on more organic increases in population movement and industrial activity.
“Given that we now forecast economic growth to fall to 2.1 percent in 2023, down from 3.1 percent last year, we can expect to see energy consumption growth softening in tandem. That said, the oil demand outlook is highly varied across different regions. Asia is the clear outperformer and we also forecast relative strength in Africa, the Middle East and Central & Eastern Europe, while Western Europe and the Americas are forecast to lag,” reads the report.
The company notes that the strength seen in developed market demand growth over 2021-22 was highly anomalous and entirely a result of the post-pandemic recovery and favorable base effects.
“Now that oil demand has normalized, structural drivers are once again taking hold, with the combination of falling energy-intensity of GDP, rising energy efficiency and an accelerated switch to low-carbon alternatives pushing growth into long-run decline. In fact, excluding the US, developed market demand looks set to peak this year. As such, emerging markets are back in the driving seat, accounting for over 90 percent of total global growth, according to our numbers. China – and the shift in Beijing’s Covid-19 strategy – is an important part of that, but growth looks relatively well-diversified across the EM basket as a whole.”
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