Oil demand growth expected to slow: Energy agency

The growth of China's demand for oil is expected to slow as the country's economic restructuring and ever-stringent environmental policy tightens, according to Oil 2019, the International Energy Agency's annual outlook for global oil markets released in Beijing on Tuesday.

This is against the backdrop that world oil demand growth is expected to remain solid with a slowing pace of growth. The demand growth is underpinned by China and India, and by the growing importance of petrochemicals as the industry invests to meet rising consumer demand, according to the outlook.

China's growth will slow while India's demand will remain robust, and by 2024 we forecast that India's annual volume growth will equal China's, it said.

This is in accordance with a previous energy outlook released by BP, which believes China's energy demand growth is expected to slow to 1.1 percent per annum by 2040, less than one-fifth of its pace in the last 22 years of 5.9 percent per annum.

Much of the increase in energy demand will be concentrated in developing Asia, including India and China, where rising prosperity and improving living standards will support increased energy consumption per head, it said.

According to IEA, the oil refining industry also will face a wave of new capacity, with net refining capacity growth reaching 9 million barrels per day. China will exceed the United States and become the one with the world's largest refining capacity as of 2024.

As the new capacity is beyond the growth of the oil, some refinery plants will be shut down to rebalance the market, it said.