Crude oil demand growth will jump by 2.1m barrels a day in 2008 as strong Middle East consumption will offset the US economic slowdown and the impact of record prices, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.

The revised forecast is about 200,000 b/d higher than last month’s IEA estimate of a growth of 1.9m b/d and it is significantly higher than the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (Opec) own calculations of growth of just 1.3m b/d.