Normally people use the term "demand" to mean a curve, which is a function of price. In an efficient market (a good approximation for the oil market), the price solves for the equilibrium between supply and demand. The quote in the article, "demand will peak before supply", is meaningless. It's not wrong, it's just not saying anything.

The fact that the price has come down in the past couple of years means that either demand has shifted down (that is, keeping the price constant, people demand less) or that supply has shifted up.

On the demand side, it's unclear to me, I'd appreciate any pointers others would have. While advanced countries get more efficient with their use of energy, emerging economies are increasing their demand as more people escape poverty.

What is clear is that the supply curve has shifted up. Both because of technological improvements in the U.S. in fracking, and due to political improvements in countries like Iran, Iraq and Nigeria.

Prices are low primarily due to unrestricted output from OPEC, the addition of Iranian oil with the lifting of sanctions and the massive increase in supply by American frackers.

There's too much distortion in the signal to confidently draw that conclusion. Particularly in oil, where the middle East has huge reserves of stuff that's easy to reach but for the unstable states on top of it; and where the rich countries have been throwing away unfathomable amounts of capital to reach small pockets of oil that diminish rapidly.

The oil price market is too volatile to say that. I think we'll see at least another couple cycles of low price - ultra high price before we can say (in retrospect) that peak demand was hit.

It's a shame that the Canadian stock market is so tied to oil exports, because it means a good chunk of retirement income is tied to that value for a whole lot of people. It's quite bleak. Especially considering that oil exports as % of the Canadian national GDP is nowhere close to the % of value it represents on the Toronto stock exchange.

Prices are a function of numerous inputs, with supply and demand being the most significant two.