Will Peak Demand Roil Global Oil Markets?

Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard

No 20250414, Liberty Street Economics from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: “Peak oil”—the notion that the depletion of accessible petroleum deposits would soon lead to declining global oil output and an upward trend in prices—was widely debated in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Proponents of the peak supply thesis turned out to be wrong, given the introduction of fracking and other new extraction methods. Now the notion of peak oil is back, but in reverse form, with global demand set to flatten and then fade amid growing use of EVs and other low-carbon technologies. The arrival of “peak demand” would turn global oil markets into a zero-sum game: Supply growth in one region or field would simply push down prices, driving out higher-cost producers elsewhere. A key question is how U.S. producers would adapt to the new market environment.

Keywords: oil; crude oil; petroleum; fuel prices; OPEC; peak oil demand; consumption; electric vehicles; supply; fracking; global market; extraction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04-14
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025 ... -global-oil-markets/ Full text (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fednls:99834

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Liberty Street Economics from Federal Reserve Bank of New York Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gabriella Bucciarelli ().