One Million Barrels Vanish: IEA Sees First Annual Demand Drop Since 2020 as Iran War Bites

The agency's 2026 forecast puts the physical toll of the conflict in plain terms: a million barrels a day of demand gone, the steepest annual decline since the pandemic shuttered the world.

The world will burn a million fewer barrels of oil each day in 2026. The International Energy Agency said so on Thursday, and the number is less a prediction than a receipt for cargo that will never load, routes that will not run, and buyers who can no longer afford the freight. Global oil demand is set for its first annual decline since 2020, and the cause is not a locked-down planet but a war that has broken the flow of Middle Eastern crude. [1]

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