IEA cuts 2026 oil demand to −1.6 million barrels a day, Opec sees it rising
The two institutions that publish the reference estimates on the oil market diverge in sign. Meanwhile Brent climbs back toward $87 and gold moves closer to $4,400 an ounce.
The morning recounted the Wall Street session after the S&P 500’s record. The fresh development of the afternoon concerns something else, and it involves the market driving uncertainty in this phase: the International Energy Agency has revised downward its estimate of global oil demand for 2026, now forecasting a decline of 1.6 million barrels a day against the one million indicated in July. Within the same framework, Opec lowered its forecast for global demand growth for 2026 to 580,000 barrels a day: the fourth consecutive downward revision.
The news on the estimates currently comes from a single source (Il Sole 24 Ore, which reports the monthly reports of the two institutions); no independent confirmation available.
The interesting point is the sign. The IEA and Opec are not debating how much demand will grow: they are giving opposite answers to whether it will grow at all. The Paris-based agency forecasts a contraction, the producers’ cartel a reduced but positive growth. The two organisations use different methodologies and scopes and have different interests — Opec represents the sellers — but a divergence in sign on a market of tens of millions of barrels a day is an indicator of just how hard to read the effect of the Middle East conflict on consumption currently is.
| Indicator | Value |
|---|---|
| Global demand 2026, IEA estimate | −1.6 million barrels/day |
| Previous IEA estimate (July) | −1 million barrels/day |
| Demand growth 2026, Opec estimate | +580,000 barrels/day |
| Brent | around $87 a barrel |
| Gas in Amsterdam | area of €60 per megawatt-hour |
| Gold | close to $4,400 an ounce |
Prices are not following the estimates. While the IEA cuts expected demand, Brent has climbed back up to around $87 a barrel and gas in Amsterdam has moved into the area of €60 per megawatt-hour. This is not a contradiction: the revisions concern consumption, prices reflect the risk on supply. Uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz is among the factors traders cite for the session, according to Il Sole 24 Ore: the market is pricing the probability that crude will not arrive, not the certainty that someone will buy it. On the actual volume of transits through the Strait we do not have verified data, and we do not publish any.
The session. On August 14th Piazza Affari closed down 0.2%, in a week of reduced trading typical of the period, while Wall Street was mixed after the previous day’s record, amid disappointing macroeconomic data and uncertainty linked to Hormuz. In Milan, defence and shipbuilding stocks rallied: Fincantieri +3.2% and Leonardo +1%, supported by the European rearmament theme and by measures from the Trump administration on naval shipbuilding, according to FIRSTonline and the session summary by Radiocor.
Safe haven and semiconductors. Gold moved back close to $4,400 an ounce and silver toward $65: these are the two prices that measure how much capital is seeking shelter. On the opposite front, Seoul’s Kospi index gained over 11% in a week, with SK Hynix up over 15%. Demand for memory chips for artificial intelligence systems and demand for safe-haven assets are rising together, which is less paradoxical than it seems: the former follows an industrial cycle, the latter a geopolitical risk, and at this moment the two clocks are not in sync.
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