The International Energy Agency warns of the threat of the crisis to the global economic recovery

The International Energy Agency said on Thursday that it expects the global energy crisis to increase demand for oil by half a million barrels per day, and may lead to higher inflation and slow down the global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oil and natural gas prices have recently risen to their highest levels in several years, which has led to an unprecedented rise in energy prices at a time when the energy deficit in Asia and Europe is afflicting significantly.

"Unprecedented coal and gas prices, as well as ongoing power outages, are driving the energy sector and energy-intensive industries to switch to oil to keep operations and operations going," the agency said in its monthly oil report.

"High energy prices also add to inflationary pressures that, along with power outages, may lead to a decline in industrial activity and a slowdown in the economic recovery," she said.

The decline in productivity underlines the need to increase investment

As a result, she added, global oil demand is expected to recover next year to pre-pandemic levels. And it made an upward adjustment to its forecast for demand in the current and next years, to raise it by 170,210 thousand barrels per day, respectively.

It noted that the increase in demand in the last quarter led to the largest withdrawal of oil product stocks in eight years, while stock levels in OECD countries were at their lowest levels since early 2015.

Meanwhile, the agency estimated that the OPEC + group of producers It is scheduled to pump 700,000 barrels per day less than the estimated demand for its crude in the fourth quarter of this year, which means that demand will exceed supply at least until the end of 2021.

And she warned that the group's surplus production capacity will rapidly shrink from nine million barrels per day in the first quarter of this year to only four million barrels per day in the second quarter of 2022.

She said that the production capacity is concentrated in a limited number of Middle Eastern countries, and its decline confirms the need to increase Invest to meet future demand. "The increase in spending on the transition to clean energy sources is paving the way forward, but this must happen quickly or the global energy markets will face a bumpy road ahead," the report said.

And the International Energy Agency said Wednesday, when issuing its annual energy forecasts ahead of an important climate conference in Britain next month, that the economic recovery from the pandemic was “unsustainable” and highly dependent on fossil fuels.

She considered that investment in renewable energy needs to triple by the end of the current decade if the world hopes to combat climate change effectively.(Reuters)