Each week brings another series of headlines about the heavy blows that will soon befall the energy sector…

“The ‘Death Spiral’ of the Oil Crash” is coming soon…

And… “Oil prices may never recover.”

Pretty soon, it seems, we’ll all be ditching our gas-powered cars and trucks for Tesla knockoffs. The sluggish US economy and the growing number of wind and solar power installations around the world will supposedly finish the job.

Boom! Oil is “the new coal.”

Do not believe it. In fact, we may be entering a new golden age for oil investment, all thanks to a certain country in Asia with a five-letter name…

If you want to know which economy will have the biggest single impact on the world oil price, and why we will continue to view the oil sector as an important part of any investment strategy, all you have to do is look at what is happening. In India.

India, with a population of 1.3 billion and a growth trend of gross domestic product (GDP) that is now rising at a faster rate than China (7.5% vs. 6.9% in 2015), is still in the early stages of a massive love affair with crude. . And considering that you need to import around 80% of what you consume, it’s a love story that literally grows month by month.

In September, oil imports increased by almost 12% compared to the levels of the previous year. The same was true in August (up 9%) when the country posted a record of nearly 19 million metric tons of crude, the equivalent of nearly 4.5 million barrels per day. By comparison, China, with a more developed economy and almost 1.4 billion people, imports about 6 million barrels a day.

As the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently noted: “India is replacing China as the main growth market for oil.”

At the current rate, the country is on track to increase annual imports by 7% for the second time in a row, having doubled its crude oil imports in a decade.

What is driving all the demand?

It’s a familiar story: a small but rising middle class (now making up about a fifth of India’s population, demographers say, but expected to rise to more than 40% by 2030).

And new cars. Lots and lots of new cars.

In 2015, passenger car sales rose nearly 10% to more than 2 million units, the fastest pace in five years. One of India’s largest automakers, Maruti Suzuki, recently predicted that annual sales would reach 5 million a year by the end of this decade.

Keep in mind that this is all taking place against a backdrop where the IEA, in its World Energy Investment 2016 report, said that current oil wells around the world are being depleted at an average of about 9% per year. Discoveries of new oil reserves are “falling to levels not seen in the last 60 years.”

Of course, it’s important to ask whether EV sales could become a bigger factor and perhaps drain India’s growing demand for oil.

The answer, I’m sure, is yes. But when is anyone’s guess. like india economic times He pointed out, the country has 400 million people without access to reliable electricity. And even in major cities, blackouts have been common due to a lack of investment in India’s power grid in previous decades. Without reliable power, even the fastest-charging, long-range electric car or motorcycle is useless.

The situation is beginning to change in India, but it will take decades. Meanwhile, oil remains the only practical game in town for investors and as a foundation for India’s rapidly developing economy.