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Forbes
14 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
China, India's Coal Usage Delivers Energy Transition Reality Check
Excavators unload coal from rail cars into a coal storage facility of a logistics company in ... More Binzhou, in eastern China's Shandong province on May 9, 2025. (Photo: STR/AFP via Getty Images) The global market consensus suggests that coal, regarded as the dirtiest of fossil fuels, has to go out first, and fastest, from the world's power mix for a meaningful energy transition to a low-to-zero carbon future. In tandem, Asia's burgeoning power sector is seen as the cornerstone of the transition in many climate change mitigation models. But on both counts, the continent's two big powerhouses - China and India - continue to deliver a sobering reality check. Market data points to both nations still incrementally motoring on coal, despite their visible overtures on renewable energy. Both saw a rise in their coal-fired power plant capacity by several gigawatts last year. According to the International Energy Agency, China approved almost 100GW of new coal-fired plants in 2024, and India a further 15GW. It meant that approvals for such plants hit their highest level since 2015. 'Nearly all of the growth in coal investments in 2024 came from China and India to meet domestic demand,' it noted in a recent report. Furthermore, investments in coal supply continue to tick upward with another 4% increase expected in 2025, albeit a slight slowdown compared with a 6% annual average growth seen over the last five years. No Shortage Of Finance Aggregated data, including government figures, on China indicates that over 300 coal power plants are currently under construction in the country. It equates to nearly 80% of all such construction around the world. Meanwhile, 46 are under construction in India, according to the country's Central Electricity Authority. Financing does not appear to be a problem at all. According to Urgewald, global banks provided finance for more than $385 billion to the coal power industry over the past three years, with annual inflows increasing last year. Unsurprisingly, Chinese banks are the leading providers of coal financing having allocated almost $250 billion to the industry between 2022 and 2024, the non-profit firm's data suggests. Meanwhile, president Donald Trump's return to the White House has further buoyed the coal industry. After having won the Powder River Basin states of Montana and Wyoming — home of the largest coal mines in the U.S. — on his way to the White House, Trump made his stance on coal abundantly clear to the world. On January 23, speaking at the World Economic Forum just days into his second presidential stint, Trump said: 'Nothing can destroy coal — not the weather, not a bomb — nothing. And we have more coal than anybody.' Less than three months on from those remarks, on April 8, Trump's issued an executive order 'reinvigorating America's beautiful clean coal industry.' Ahead of signing the order, the president said: 'Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure and powerful form of energy. It's cheap, incredibly efficient, high density, and it's almost indestructible.' U.S. banks, already the second-largest lenders to the coal industry, having lent around $50 billion to it over the last three years, also took their cue from the changing American political climate. Ahead of Trump's inauguration in January, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citi - who were among the biggest coal financiers stateside - quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance, considered the financial sector's low-to-zero carbon target-setting group. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo also joined them. Neighboring Canada's big six banks - Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, National Bank of Canada, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce - also announced their departure in February. Ironically, the UN-sponsored initiative was set up in 2021 by former Bank of Canada Governor, and current Canadian prime minister Mark Carney to encourage financial institutions to push toward achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Australia's Macquarie bank did likewise in February, and Japan's Nomura and Sumitomo Mitsui quit in March. U.K.'s HSBC became the latest to ditch the NZBA in July. It indicates nothing short of a full-blown exodus from the initiative. Sobering Reality Check But it also attests to the point that many banks now accept financing fossil fuels, including the dirtiest one, isn't going to end anytime soon. And if the world's three leading economies - U.S., China and India - aren't giving up on coal just yet, why should they jump the gun. Of course, that's despite repeated assertions by the International Renewable Energy Agency that the majority of new renewables projects are now cheaper than fossil fuels alternatives, including, and especially coal. In 2024, solar photovoltaics were, on average, 41% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternatives, while onshore wind projects were 53% cheaper, it noted in its latest global market assessment. But these market realities are not necessarily being ignored. Both China and India are investing heavily in renewables. Yet, they find themselves unable to ditch coal, along with several peers in Asia due to a number of reasons. To quote research and consulting outfit Wood Mackenzie: 'A confluence of factors, from a rapidly electrifying global economy to energy security priorities rising from geopolitical and cost shocks to Asia's young and evolving coal fleet, could extend coal's role as a vital power source well into the next decade and beyond.' That's nothing short of a check on the global energy transition and a carbon heavy weight on its trajectory to a potential net zero emissions future.
Bloomberg
17 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Global LNG Supply to Surge Most Since 2019 Next Year, IEA Says
By and Elena Mazneva Save Global supply of liquefied natural gas is set to surge the most since 2019 next year, primarily driven by production additions in North America, the International Energy Agency said. The increase in supply will accelerate to 7%, or 40 billion cubic meters a year in 2026, following a 5.5% expansion this year, the IEA said in its quarterly gas market report. A project in Qatar will also add to the growth.
CNN
a day ago
- Business
- CNN
They're using the techniques honed by oil and gas to find near-limitless clean energy beneath our feet
Deep beneath Utah's desert soil, an oil drill bored through the Earth at a blistering pace earlier this spring. Gnarly looking drill bits tore through granite at around 300 feet per hour. It was done after just 16 days. The borehole, completed in April, stretches nearly 3 miles toward the center of the Earth, where temperatures reach around 500 degrees Fahrenheit and fossil fuels lurk between ancient sediments. But this project is not searching for fossil fuel. It's seeking next-generation clean energy. Fervo Energy, the Houston-based company leading the project, is one of several using the tools and advanced techniques of the oil and gas industry to drill many miles underground to reach the hot rock below. Their quest is to make clean, abundant geothermal energy available anywhere on the planet. Next-gen geothermal has the potential to meet global electricity demand 140 times over, according to the International Energy Agency. It's one of the only forms of clean energy that may be palatable for the fossil fuel-focused Trump administration. Yet the pathway to success is littered with challenges, from high costs and complex engineering problems to the risk of earthquakes as drills prod deep into the ground. Advocates say geothermal could be a clean energy gamechanger. But to work, the industry needs to figure out how to drill deeper, faster and more cheaply — and time is of the essence as the climate crisis escalates. Humans have used geothermal energy for thousands of years, first for cooking and bathing, and more recently for heating homes and generating electricity. It is the stuff of clean-energy dreams: near limitless and available 24/7. Solar and wind are cheap but intermittent, relying on the sun shining and the wind blowing. Finding a so-called baseload source of clean energy that can support them, one that can turn on with the flick of a switch and run all the time, is a climate holy grail — especially as electricity demand soars, driven by AI and data centers. This is where geothermal could shine. The problem is how to scale it. Conventional geothermal needs natural, underground reservoirs of hot water or steam, and it needs the rocks down there to be porous, allowing the water to move through them, heat up, and be sucked up to the surface. This geology is rare, present only in certain places including China, Iceland, Kenya and parts of the United States. Geothermal currently accounts for less than 1% of global demand. Next-gen geothermal promises get around these limitations. It just needs heat; the rest it creates artificially. Fervo's next-gen technique is called 'enhanced geothermal.' It drills two wells deep underground, first vertically then horizontally. It pumps down fluid at high pressure to shatter the rock in a process called hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' very similar to the technique used to extract oil and gas. Water is then pumped down one well, to circulate through the cracks and heat up, before it's brought to the surface via the second well. The US has been experimenting with enhanced geothermal since the 1970s, when scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico proved it was possible to harvest heat from fractures in the ground, said Jefferson Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell University, who was involved in the project. Decades later, two projects, both in southwest Utah, have taken up the reins, armed with more advanced technology. Utah FORGE, a $300 million research project supported with Department of Energy funding, kicked off in 2014. Its goal is 'to create geothermal reservoirs where none exist naturally,' said Joseph Moore, a University of Utah geologist and project leader of Utah FORGE. A breakthrough came in April 2024 when they successfully circulated water through rock 1.5 miles deep and brought hot water to the surface. Right next door is Fervo, which uses know-how gleaned from FORGE. It completed a commercial pilot facility in Nevada in 2023 that's able to deliver power to the grid. In Utah, it's building 'the largest next-generation geothermal power plant in the world,' said Tim Latimer, Fervo's CEO and co-founder. The company's aim is to deliver its first 100 megawatts of geothermal energy by 2026 and add 400 more by 2028, enough to power more than 375,000 homes. Fervo believes its technology can boost geothermal energy in the US by hundreds of gigawatts, starting in the West where it's hotter at shallower depths, then moving east. It has already signed a deal with Google to provide power to its data centers and has 600 megawatts of power purchase agreements with utilities like Cal Edison. Experts are excited by the company's progress. 'It's not cheap to do this, but if they're successful, it will be a big step forward,' Cornell's Tester said. Enhanced geothermal still faces many challenges: slashing costs, scaling up drilling under high-pressures and temperatures, and water use. There are also land issues. While the surface footprint of geothermal is small compared to solar or wind, it's still a big industrial endeavor with trucks and drilling rigs. Perhaps one of its most high-profile issues is earthquakes. 'If you drill a well and you pump super high-pressure fluids down it and cause a lot of rock shattering at depth, that's going to be felt at the surface,' said Gillian Foulger, a geologist at Durham University. The specter of what happened in Pohang, South Korea, still looms. In November 2017, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake shook the city, believed to have been triggered by an enhanced geothermal project. It was one of the country's most destructive earthquakes on record, injuring around 100 people and forcing thousands into emergency housing. Advocates believe the risks of similar big events are low. 'The beauty of a geothermal system is you actually are always monitoring the seismicity,' Tester said. 'I think those risks are very manageable.' Still, it can make a dent in public perception. Earthquakes are 'an industrial nuisance, basically akin to pollution,' Foulger said. They are also fundamentally unpredictable. A project could operate without issue for a decade, 'and then suddenly you could get troubling earthquakes,' she told CNN. Some companies are developing a different technology able to decrease the earthquake risk. It involves no fracking. Instead, it's like a 'massive underground radiator,' said Robert Winsloe, an executive vice president at the Canadian-based company Eavor. Eavor's technique works like this: it drills two deep vertical wells close to each other and brings them together horizontally in a closed loop. It then drills and connects multiple loops off the horizontal pipe. Water circulates through the pipes, picking up heat from the rock and flowing to the surface. The company is constructing its first commercial plant in the German town of Geretsried, outside Munich, burrowing nearly 2.8 miles into the ground. Operating costs are very low, as is seismic risk. But many experts question whether it could ever be economically viable given thr eye-watering upfront costs. The system relies on huge loops to collect enough heat, Moore said: 'It's very expensive drilling.' Winsloe is honest about the challenges, but if the economics stack up, he said, 'this is the game changer that we're looking for.' Other companies are trying to go deeper and hotter, using technology that sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie. Massachusetts-based Quaise Energy wants to drill down more than 6 miles to reach temperatures of over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, by vaporizing dense rock. Its gyrotron device produces high-powered energy waves that will be sent down a long metal tube miles into the Earth to destroy rock by heating it to temperatures of around 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. The company is conducting field trials in Texas, and plans to drill its first full size geothermal boreholes by 2028. The eventual aim is to be able to drill 6 miles in just 100 days, said Matthew Houde, co-founder and chief of staff at Quaise. For comparison, the deepest well ever drilled, the Kola borehole in Russia completed in 1992, is 7.5 miles deep and took two decades to drill. Quaise's plans are bold but many are skeptical. 'Quaise really hasn't done a lot in terms of field demonstrations yet,' Tester said. 'They've made some incredible claims, and I'm not even sure that they'll get there.' Moore simply said, 'Show me that you can do it.' A big advantage of geothermal in the US is that it seems to be the rare form of energy with bipartisan support. It's green and creates jobs, pleasing Democrats. It's home-grown and fits with an energy independence agenda, pleasing Republicans. Even better, geothermal harnesses years of American drilling and fracking know-how from oil and gas extraction, helping bridge an energy culture long dominated by fossil fuels. 'Perhaps geothermal might be one of the few things that actually survives without serious cuts, because it's so heavily connected to oil and gas,' Tester said. It provides an easy transition for oil and gas workers, said David Turk, the former deputy energy secretary in the Biden administration. 'We've done more fracking and more drilling than any other country in the entire world,' Turk told CNN. 'We have a ready-made workforce.' Trump's Energy Sec. Chris Wright sat on the board of Fervo before starting his post at the Department of Energy. And geothermal has so far seemed to escape the chainsaw the Trump administration has taken to other forms of renewable energy. Turk said he's heartened to see geothermal getting a small funding boost in Trump's budget request, but added the government should be prepared to step in with more financial support to help really kickstart the technology. Energy Department spokesperson Olivia Tinari sounded a positive note. 'While geothermal energy hasn't achieved liftoff yet, it should, and it can,' she told CNN in a statement. 'A mature geothermal industry will energize our country.' For now, eyes are on the companies racing to make next-gen geothermal a commercial reality. Some experts remain cautious. Durham University's Gillian Foulger, who has worked in geothermal for four decades, said companies trumpet big breakthroughs all the time. 'I've heard that just about every year for the last 20 years,' she said. Foulger thinks commercialization is still two decades away. But if it can be done, she added, 'the potential payoff is pretty significant.' Fervo's Latimer is unsurprisingly far more bullish. 'The pace of technology innovation in geothermal has outpaced what really any market observers expected,' he said. And the opportunity is too enormous to ignore, he added. 'You could meet humanity's energy needs for 17 billion years based off just what's in the heat of the Earth.'
CNN
a day ago
- Business
- CNN
They're using the techniques honed by oil and gas to find near-limitless clean energy beneath our feet
Deep beneath Utah's desert soil, an oil drill bored through the Earth at a blistering pace earlier this spring. Gnarly looking drill bits tore through granite at around 300 feet per hour. It was done after just 16 days. The borehole, completed in April, stretches nearly 3 miles toward the center of the Earth, where temperatures reach around 500 degrees Fahrenheit and fossil fuels lurk between ancient sediments. But this project is not searching for fossil fuel. It's seeking next-generation clean energy. Fervo Energy, the Houston-based company leading the project, is one of several using the tools and advanced techniques of the oil and gas industry to drill many miles underground to reach the hot rock below. Their quest is to make clean, abundant geothermal energy available anywhere on the planet. Next-gen geothermal has the potential to meet global electricity demand 140 times over, according to the International Energy Agency. It's one of the only forms of clean energy that may be palatable for the fossil fuel-focused Trump administration. Yet the pathway to success is littered with challenges, from high costs and complex engineering problems to the risk of earthquakes as drills prod deep into the ground. Advocates say geothermal could be a clean energy gamechanger. But to work, the industry needs to figure out how to drill deeper, faster and more cheaply — and time is of the essence as the climate crisis escalates. Humans have used geothermal energy for thousands of years, first for cooking and bathing, and more recently for heating homes and generating electricity. It is the stuff of clean-energy dreams: near limitless and available 24/7. Solar and wind are cheap but intermittent, relying on the sun shining and the wind blowing. Finding a so-called baseload source of clean energy that can support them, one that can turn on with the flick of a switch and run all the time, is a climate holy grail — especially as electricity demand soars, driven by AI and data centers. This is where geothermal could shine. The problem is how to scale it. Conventional geothermal needs natural, underground reservoirs of hot water or steam, and it needs the rocks down there to be porous, allowing the water to move through them, heat up, and be sucked up to the surface. This geology is rare, present only in certain places including China, Iceland, Kenya and parts of the United States. Geothermal currently accounts for less than 1% of global demand. Next-gen geothermal promises get around these limitations. It just needs heat; the rest it creates artificially. Fervo's next-gen technique is called 'enhanced geothermal.' It drills two wells deep underground, first vertically then horizontally. It pumps down fluid at high pressure to shatter the rock in a process called hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' very similar to the technique used to extract oil and gas. Water is then pumped down one well, to circulate through the cracks and heat up, before it's brought to the surface via the second well. The US has been experimenting with enhanced geothermal since the 1970s, when scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico proved it was possible to harvest heat from fractures in the ground, said Jefferson Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell University, who was involved in the project. Decades later, two projects, both in southwest Utah, have taken up the reins, armed with more advanced technology. Utah FORGE, a $300 million research project supported with Department of Energy funding, kicked off in 2014. Its goal is 'to create geothermal reservoirs where none exist naturally,' said Joseph Moore, a University of Utah geologist and project leader of Utah FORGE. A breakthrough came in April 2024 when they successfully circulated water through rock 1.5 miles deep and brought hot water to the surface. Right next door is Fervo, which uses know-how gleaned from FORGE. It completed a commercial pilot facility in Nevada in 2023 that's able to deliver power to the grid. In Utah, it's building 'the largest next-generation geothermal power plant in the world,' said Tim Latimer, Fervo's CEO and co-founder. The company's aim is to deliver its first 100 megawatts of geothermal energy by 2026 and add 400 more by 2028, enough to power more than 375,000 homes. Fervo believes its technology can boost geothermal energy in the US by hundreds of gigawatts, starting in the West where it's hotter at shallower depths, then moving east. It has already signed a deal with Google to provide power to its data centers and has 600 megawatts of power purchase agreements with utilities like Cal Edison. Experts are excited by the company's progress. 'It's not cheap to do this, but if they're successful, it will be a big step forward,' Cornell's Tester said. Enhanced geothermal still faces many challenges: slashing costs, scaling up drilling under high-pressures and temperatures, and water use. There are also land issues. While the surface footprint of geothermal is small compared to solar or wind, it's still a big industrial endeavor with trucks and drilling rigs. Perhaps one of its most high-profile issues is earthquakes. 'If you drill a well and you pump super high-pressure fluids down it and cause a lot of rock shattering at depth, that's going to be felt at the surface,' said Gillian Foulger, a geologist at Durham University. The specter of what happened in Pohang, South Korea, still looms. In November 2017, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake shook the city, believed to have been triggered by an enhanced geothermal project. It was one of the country's most destructive earthquakes on record, injuring around 100 people and forcing thousands into emergency housing. Advocates believe the risks of similar big events are low. 'The beauty of a geothermal system is you actually are always monitoring the seismicity,' Tester said. 'I think those risks are very manageable.' Still, it can make a dent in public perception. Earthquakes are 'an industrial nuisance, basically akin to pollution,' Foulger said. They are also fundamentally unpredictable. A project could operate without issue for a decade, 'and then suddenly you could get troubling earthquakes,' she told CNN. Some companies are developing a different technology able to decrease the earthquake risk. It involves no fracking. Instead, it's like a 'massive underground radiator,' said Robert Winsloe, an executive vice president at the Canadian-based company Eavor. Eavor's technique works like this: it drills two deep vertical wells close to each other and brings them together horizontally in a closed loop. It then drills and connects multiple loops off the horizontal pipe. Water circulates through the pipes, picking up heat from the rock and flowing to the surface. The company is constructing its first commercial plant in the German town of Geretsried, outside Munich, burrowing nearly 2.8 miles into the ground. Operating costs are very low, as is seismic risk. But many experts question whether it could ever be economically viable given thr eye-watering upfront costs. The system relies on huge loops to collect enough heat, Moore said: 'It's very expensive drilling.' Winsloe is honest about the challenges, but if the economics stack up, he said, 'this is the game changer that we're looking for.' Other companies are trying to go deeper and hotter, using technology that sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie. Massachusetts-based Quaise Energy wants to drill down more than 6 miles to reach temperatures of over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, by vaporizing dense rock. Its gyrotron device produces high-powered energy waves that will be sent down a long metal tube miles into the Earth to destroy rock by heating it to temperatures of around 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. The company is conducting field trials in Texas, and plans to drill its first full size geothermal boreholes by 2028. The eventual aim is to be able to drill 6 miles in just 100 days, said Matthew Houde, co-founder and chief of staff at Quaise. For comparison, the deepest well ever drilled, the Kola borehole in Russia completed in 1992, is 7.5 miles deep and took two decades to drill. Quaise's plans are bold but many are skeptical. 'Quaise really hasn't done a lot in terms of field demonstrations yet,' Tester said. 'They've made some incredible claims, and I'm not even sure that they'll get there.' Moore simply said, 'Show me that you can do it.' A big advantage of geothermal in the US is that it seems to be the rare form of energy with bipartisan support. It's green and creates jobs, pleasing Democrats. It's home-grown and fits with an energy independence agenda, pleasing Republicans. Even better, geothermal harnesses years of American drilling and fracking know-how from oil and gas extraction, helping bridge an energy culture long dominated by fossil fuels. 'Perhaps geothermal might be one of the few things that actually survives without serious cuts, because it's so heavily connected to oil and gas,' Tester said. It provides an easy transition for oil and gas workers, said David Turk, the former deputy energy secretary in the Biden administration. 'We've done more fracking and more drilling than any other country in the entire world,' Turk told CNN. 'We have a ready-made workforce.' Trump's Energy Sec. Chris Wright sat on the board of Fervo before starting his post at the Department of Energy. And geothermal has so far seemed to escape the chainsaw the Trump administration has taken to other forms of renewable energy. Turk said he's heartened to see geothermal getting a small funding boost in Trump's budget request, but added the government should be prepared to step in with more financial support to help really kickstart the technology. Energy Department spokesperson Olivia Tinari sounded a positive note. 'While geothermal energy hasn't achieved liftoff yet, it should, and it can,' she told CNN in a statement. 'A mature geothermal industry will energize our country.' For now, eyes are on the companies racing to make next-gen geothermal a commercial reality. Some experts remain cautious. Durham University's Gillian Foulger, who has worked in geothermal for four decades, said companies trumpet big breakthroughs all the time. 'I've heard that just about every year for the last 20 years,' she said. Foulger thinks commercialization is still two decades away. But if it can be done, she added, 'the potential payoff is pretty significant.' Fervo's Latimer is unsurprisingly far more bullish. 'The pace of technology innovation in geothermal has outpaced what really any market observers expected,' he said. And the opportunity is too enormous to ignore, he added. 'You could meet humanity's energy needs for 17 billion years based off just what's in the heat of the Earth.'
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
OPEC, IEA crude oil demand forecasts may be too cautious
A key difference in crude oil demand forecasts between this year and 2024 is that both OPEC and the International Energy Agency ( IEA ) are being far more cautious in their growth expectations. While the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the wider OPEC+ group publicly maintain that strong demand and a tight market justify increasing oil output, the numbers in their monthly report are more circumspect. It is largely the same for the IEA, which forecast in its July monthly report that global crude demand will grow by 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2025, the slowest pace since 2009. OPEC's July report is slightly more bullish, forecasting oil demand will increase by 1.29 million bpd in 2025, with 1.16 million bpd coming from countries outside the developed economies of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The forecasts from both the IEA and OPEC are now so cautious that they actually run the risk of being too pessimistic, especially in the top-importing region of Asia. This is in stark contrast to last year, when OPEC in particular was massively bullish in its demand forecasts even as Asia's crude oil imports were declining. There is, of course, a difference between demand forecasts and imports, but the level of seaborne imports is the key driver of crude prices, given it is this market, which accounts for about 40% of global daily oil demand, that sets the global prices. In its July 2024 monthly report OPEC forecast that Asia's non-OECD oil demand would rise by 1.34 million bpd in 2024, with China accounting for 760,000 bpd of this. However, Asia's crude imports actually declined in 2024, dropping by 370,000 bpd to 26.51 million bpd, according to data compiled by LSEG Oil Research. It was the first decline in Asia's oil imports since 2021, at a time when demand was hit by the lockdowns prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The gap between OPEC's bullish forecasts for much of 2024 and the reality of weak crude imports by Asia may have tempered the exporter group's forecasts for 2025. The question is whether they are now actually being too cautious. Asia recovery OPEC's July monthly report forecast that non-OECD Asia's oil demand will rise by 610,000 bpd in 2025, with China the main contributor at 210,000 and India, Asia's second-biggest crude importer, seeing an increase of 160,000 bpd. The IEA said in its July report that it expects China's total oil product demand to rise by 81,000 bpd in 2025, while India is expected to see a gain of 92,000 bpd. Total non-OECD Asia is forecast to see demand rise by 352,000 bpd. Both the OPEC and the IEA numbers seem modest, especially since Asia's crude imports actually saw relatively strong growth in the first half of 2025. Asia's imports in the first six months of the year were 27.25 million bpd, an increase of 510,000 bpd from the same period last year, according to calculations based on LSEG data. Imports increased in the second quarter, especially in China, as refiners took advantage of the weakening trend in oil prices that prevailed at the time cargoes were being arranged. It is likely that some of the increase in oil imports was used to build inventories, a process that may extend into the second half if oil prices remain soft as OPEC+ increases output amid the economic uncertainty created by U.S. President Donald Trump's ongoing global trade war. If there is one lesson to be learnt from the difference between this year's circumspect oil demand forecasts and last year's buoyant estimates, it is that price plays a far bigger role in demand, especially in Asia. Part of the reason Asia's crude imports fell short of forecasts in 2024 was because prices remained elevated for much of the year, reaching above $92 a barrel in April and only briefly dropping below $70 in September. This year, prices have been softer, with benchmark Brent futures peaking at just over $82 a barrel in January, and trading as low as $58.50 in May.
