Recently, oil and natural gas prices have increased significantly, leading to a rise in power prices as energy shortages affect Asia and Europe. The International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that record coal and gas prices, along with blackouts, are forcing the power sector and energy-intensive industries to rely on oil to maintain operations. The higher energy prices are also contributing to inflation and could potentially slow down economic recovery. Consequently, the IEA has revised its global oil demand forecasts for next year, expecting demand to return to pre-pandemic levels. It has increased its demand forecasts for 2021 and 2022 by 170,000 bpd and 210,000 bpd respectively. An increase in demand during the past quarter resulted in the largest depletion of oil product stocks in eight years, with storage levels in OECD countries reaching their lowest point since early 2015. The IEA predicted that OPEC+ would produce 700,000 bpd less than the expected demand for its crude in the fourth quarter of this year, indicating that demand will exceed supply until at least the end of 2021. The group's spare production capacity is expected to decrease rapidly from 9 million bpd in the first quarter of this year to just 4 million bpd in the second quarter of 2022, primarily in a few Middle East countries. This decline highlights the necessity of increasing investment to meet future demand. The IEA emphasized the importance of accelerating spending on clean energy transitions to avoid potential challenges in global energy markets, cautioning that the economic recovery from the pandemic, which heavily relies on fossil fuels, is not sustainable. The IEA released its annual energy outlook ahead of an upcoming climate conference in Britain next month. The world must increase its investment in renewable energy threefold by the end of the decade in order to effectively combat climate change, according to a statement released on Wednesday.