PetroChina: rapid EV uptake means oil consumption for transport to peak by next year ‘at the latest’ in China

• Domestic demand for oil will rise only 1 per cent year on year in 2024 after growing 11 per cent in 2023, state-owned oil and gas producer says
• Oil consumption will continue to grow in other sectors such as petrochemicals, but will peak before 2030, executive says

Although oil consumption will continue to grow in other sectors such as petrochemicals, the oil industry has to seek new business models and breakthroughs amid the global clean-energy transition, an executive said on Thursday.

“We believe that China’s oil consumption will reach its peak before 2030 at 780 to 800 million tonnes per year,” said Wu Mouyuan, vice-president at CNPC Economics & Technology Research Institute (ETRI), a research arm of state energy giant China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the parent company of PetroChina.

“From 2031 to 2050, oil will no longer be consumed as a transportation fuel, but converted into a feedstock for chemical production,” he said in Hong Kong, where the company released a report on oil and gas industry development. China’s consumption of oil will continue to decline after 2031, to 200 to 250 million tonnes per year after 2050, as the country strides towards nationwide net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, he estimated. ⠀

Fossil fuels fell below 80 per cent of global energy consumption for the first time in 2023, data from the International Energy Agency showed. Meanwhile, investments in clean energy exceeded US$1.7 trillion last year, compared with around US$1.1 trillion in fossil-fuel energy.

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