The rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EV) around the world will probably cause global oil demand to peak two years earlier than previously expected, Norway's biggest independent energy consultancy Rystad said on Wednesday.
World demand is now seen peaking at 101.6 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in 2026, down from a forecast made in November of a peak in 2028 at 102.2 million bpd, Rystad Energy said.
"The adoption of electrification in transport and other oil-dependent sectors is accelerating and is set to chip away at oil sooner and faster than in our previous forecast," Rystad wrote.
Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Rystad had anticipated that peak oil demand would be reached in 2030 at 106 million bpd.
Aside from the staggering takeover of EVs, assumptions across all our scenarios see oil demand being either phased out, substituted, or recycled across a range of sectors, it said.
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik, editing by Nerijus Adomaitis)