Oil prices have tumbled by around a quarter in the past three months, largely due to fears of a prolonged slump in global energy demand. But no major forecaster is actually predicting one. Two of the most closely followed predictors of global oil demand, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) – the West’s energy watchdog – see it growing by between 2% and 3% this year and next. That’s nearly double the yearly average in the decade before the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, when annual growth in global oil consumption averaged 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd). Despite economic storm clouds from Beijing to Washington, neither forecaster expects the post-pandemic rebound in oil consumption to be significantly marred by a possible recession. “We are still optimistic,” OPEC’s new Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais told Reuters […]