IEA: China, India demand to drive up oil prices

Long-term oil prices will rise and disruptions to supply will become more of a danger on the back of soaring demand from China and India, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Wednesday. In its annual World Energy Outlook, the IEA said that, despite an expected rise in oil industry investment over the next five years, "it is uncertain whether [it] will be sufficient to offset both the decline in output at existing fields and the projected increase in demand." This, together with uncertainty as to how big Chinese and Indian demand will be, could result in a supply-side crunch before 2015. The IEA also suggested that by 2030 China and India could be importing as much oil as the US and Japan do today, the Financial Times reported.