A year after forecasting that oil demand would keep rising until 2040, TotalEnergies has moved its peak forward to between 2035 and 2040, and says the Iran war could accelerate the energy transition.
The company’s annual energy outlook, released on Monday, projects demand for petroleum products plateauing through the 2030s before a slow decline. Chief sustainability officer Aurélien Hamelle told reporters that demand could fall faster if EV sales keep growing.
In November 2025, TotalEnergies forecast oil demand rising nearly 5% to 108 million barrels per day by 2040 under current trends, before easing to 98 million bpd by 2050. It cited the partial rollback of U.S. green subsidies, new LNG approvals, new coal plants in Asia and slower EV sales. CEO Patrick Pouyanné said at the time that the chances of the Paris-aligned scenario were “diminishing, even out of reach.”
A year earlier, the company had expected demand to peak after 2030.
The 2026 report says the energy crisis set off by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran could act as an “accelerator” of the transition. It points to a sharp rise in EV sales in Asia, Latin America and Europe, and to higher biofuel blending mandates. Hamelle described a “stunning acceleration” of low-carbon technology between the second quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects about 23 million EV sales in 2026, close to 30% of new cars worldwide. In the first quarter, EV sales rose roughly 30% in Europe, 80% in Asia-Pacific outside China and 75% in Latin America. Gasoline-only cars fell below half of global new car sales for the first time in the first half of the year, at 49%.
The war, which began on February 28 and choked tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, has also paid TotalEnergies well. Its third-quarter adjusted net income more than doubled to $9.1 billion, on a record $4.1 billion from its downstream division as refining margins hit historic highs.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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