The energy strategy assumes that the situation in the oil market until 2035 “will remain unstable, subject to various threats”.
“In the medium term, the level of oil prices will be determined by a number of factors – general economic (including the growth rate of the world economy, the situation in financial markets, the level of break-even oil shale development in the United States and other countries), political and social (including the pandemic of new coronavirus infection COVID-19 and similar phenomena),” the document says.
The market “may require continued coordinated action by oil exporters”.
“The global oil demand growth is projected to slow down after 2025 with a possible peak in demand before 2030. Demand for petroleum products will be formed under the influence of increased consumption in the transport sector, while reducing the demand in the domestic, commercial and electricity sectors,” the document says.
At the same time, the Energy Strategy relies on the development of primary crude oil processing in the Asia-Pacific region and Africa. “Growth of primary refining capacities is expected in the Asia-Pacific region primarily due to the commissioning of new refineries in the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of India, which will contribute to increased competition in the oil products markets. Some growth of primary refining capacity is expected in Africa, where construction of refineries may become an alternative to increasing imports of high-quality petroleum products from other regions. In Europe and North America, primary refining volumes will decline due to low margins,” the document says.
“The leader in terms of the growth rate of demand among fossil fuels will be gas because of the lowest level of greenhouse gas emissions,” the document says. In the medium term, the formation of the world gas market will be completed, resulting in a convergence of gas prices in different regions of the world. The development of production and supply of liquefied natural gas will play a key role in this process. The production of hydrogen and hydrogen methane mixtures from natural gas is a promising area for diversification and efficiency increase,” the document says.
The coal market will remain very uncertain in the future. “The inevitable decline in coal consumption in OECD countries and the passing of the peak or stabilisation of demand in developing countries, with the unpredictability of the speed of these changes, create extremely high uncertainty about the prospects for the international coal market. Trade volumes and market prices will depend primarily on the policy decisions that China and India will make regarding their coal consumption. Reduced demand for coal in Europe will be offset by increased imports from South and Southeast Asia (where demand for high quality coal will increase), as well as from the Middle East and Africa. In China and developed countries of Asia (Japan, Republic of Korea) it is possible to stabilise the volume of coal imports”.
The share of electricity in final consumption will rise to about 25 % of total energy consumption by 2040 (an increase of about 60 % compare to 2017). “More than 40 % of this increase is expected to come from non-carbon resources. The power industry of most countries in the world is projected to be based on existing centralized power systems based on large power plants – conventional (thermal, nuclear, hydro) or wind and solar power systems. New technologies of distributed electricity generation, microgeneration, managed consumption, virtual aggregation of resources create fundamentally new conditions for the development of a competitive retail market built on the basis of automated local trading platforms for electricity trade, which, on the one hand, is leading to limiting the growth of electricity prices, and is being a source of additional investment in the development of flexibility management systems for the consumers, and on the other hand, reduces the pre-existing demand for energy,” the document says.