The Middle East will remain the world’s only large source of low-cost oil in the long term, and is expected to provide the bulk of global supply increases after the mid-2020s, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) latest World Energy Outlook.

The IEA said the role Opec plays in global oil exports will be reduced temporarily over the next 10 years by rising output from the US, oil sands in Canada, deep-water production in Brazil and naturals gas liquids (NGL) from across the world.

“But, by the mid-2020s, non-Opec production will start to fall back and countries in the Middle East will provide most of the increase in global supply,” the IEA said in its executive summary.

“The Middle East, the only large source of low-cost oil, remains at the centre of the longer-term oil outlook,” it added.

The report forecasts that by 2030, the Middle East’s oil consumption will overtake that of the EU, and China will supplant the US as the world’s largest oil consumer.