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The world faces a “staggering” surplus of oil equating to millions of barrels a day by the end of the decade, as oil companies increase production, undermining the ability of Opec+ to manage crude prices, the International Energy Agency has warned.

While demand is forecast to peak before 2030, continued investment by oil producers, led by the US, would by then result in more than 8mn b/d of spare capacity, the IEA wrote in its annual report on the industry released on Wednesday.

This “massive cushion” of extra oil could “upend” the efforts of Opec+ to manage the market and usher in an era of lower prices, the IEA said, adding that the level of spare capacity would be unprecedented outside the coronavirus pandemic.

“It is not the first time the oil markets would see an oversupply, but one important outcome would be downward pressure on the prices,” said Fatih Birol, the agency’s director.

He added the combination of slowing demand and rising supply “could have substantial implications” for oil companies. “It is time for many producers to look at their business plans, in my view.”

The Paris-based body, founded in the aftermath of the 1970s Arab oil embargoes to advise on energy security, said last year that the world was at “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. It has said demand for oil, natural gas and coal will all start to fall before the end of the decade amid the mass rollout of renewable energy and electric vehicles

But its projections have been decried by the oil industry, particularly in the Middle East and the US, where producers are stepping up their investments in pumping more crude.

Global capital spending on oil and fields rose to $538bn in 2023, the highest level since 2019 in real terms. The increase in investment was largely driven by state oil companies in the Middle East, which increased their spending to twice the levels seen 10 years ago, and China.

Haitham Al Ghais, Opec general secretary, has described the IEA forecasts as “dangerous”, and warned of “energy chaos on a potentially unprecedented scale” if producers stopped investing in new oil and gas.

In its new report, the IEA called into question whether Opec+ would be able to expand future production, as it continued to be squeezed by countries outside the alliance, especially the US.

“This year, [the Opec+] total oil market share has dropped to 48.5 per cent, the lowest since it was formed in 2016, due to its sharp voluntary output cuts,” the IEA noted. It added that even if Opec+, a wider group that includes Russia, continued its deep cuts, it “would pump above the call on its crude oil to varying degrees from 2025 through 2030”.

Birol outlined three main drivers for oil demand to peak by the end of the decade: reduced petrol use as the world switches to electric vehicles, a move by countries in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, to switch from oil to renewables to generate electricity, and a lower future growth rate in China.

“Perhaps the most important factor comes from China,” he said. “In the last 10 years, about 60 per cent of global oil demand growth came from China alone.” The IEA said it expected the 6 per cent annual growth the Asian country had registered in that period to fall to about 4 per cent a year in its forecast period.

The future drivers of growth would include more aviation and the “booming petrochemical sector”, Birol said. The IEA also expects petrol use to increase in India as more drivers hit the roads.

Meanwhile, oil demand in OECD countries, which peaked in 2007, would fall to 1991 levels by 2030. The IEA has assumed 3 per cent annual global economic growth for the rest of the decade.

The IEA cautioned its forecast for shrinking oil demand could be derailed by “relatively minor changes” in events. For example, a 0.3 per cent annual increase in the world’s GDP growth, a $5 annual drop in real oil prices, or a 15 per cent slowdown in the rollout of EVs would each be enough to swing oil consumption back to growth by the end of the decade.

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Two surveys of millions of stars in our galaxy have revealed mysterious spikes in infrared heat coming from dozens of them. Astronomers say this could be evidence for alien civilisations harnessing energy from their stars by using a vast construction known as a Dyson sphere – although they can’t fully rule out more mundane explanations.

First proposed in the 1960s, Dyson spheres are hypothesised structures that could surround entire stars to absorb their energy, a possible means by which advanced aliens might draw huge amounts of power. If such objects exist, they should be warm enough to give off a detectable infrared glow – a “technosignature” that could alert us to the presence of alien life.

To search for potential Dyson spheres, two teams of astronomers, one led by Matías Suazo at Uppsala University in Sweden and the other by Gaby Contardo at the International School for Advanced Studies in Italy, combined data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite – which is mapping the position and motion of billions of stars in our galaxy – with infrared survey results from ground and space telescopes.

Each team analysed the same 5 million stars from the combined datasets, and both turned up signs of excess infrared heat that couldn’t be explained by known natural processes. “The most fascinating explanation could be actual Dyson spheres,” says Suazo.

His team spotted strange signals at seven red dwarfs within 900 light-years of Earth. These stars are smaller and dimmer than our sun, but appeared up to 60 times brighter in infrared than expected.

This excess would have been caused by something with a temperature of up to 400°C, consistent with what we might expect for a Dyson sphere. Up to 16 per cent of each star would have to be obscured to account for the signal, meaning it would more likely be a variant of the idea called a Dyson swarm – a collection of large satellites orbiting a star to collect energy – if the cause is truly of artificial origin. “This isn’t like a single solid shell around the star,” says team member Jason Wright at Pennsylvania State University.

Contardo’s results are broader, with 53 candidates found among larger stars, including some sun-like stars, at distances of up to 6500 light years from Earth. “Both sets of candidates are interesting,” she says, though inconclusive. “You need follow-up observations to confirm anything.”

One natural explanation that could mimic the properties of a Dyson sphere is that the stars are surrounded by hot, planet-forming debris disks, but most of the stars found by both teams appear to be too old for this. Another possibility is that each star could coincidentally be positioned in front of a distant galaxy giving off an infrared glow.

The infrared signals could also result from some unknown natural process. “It might be something that happens very rarely, like if two planets collide and produce an enormous amount of material,” says David Hogg at New York University, who worked with Contardo. “I think it’s most likely to be a natural phenomenon.”

The James Webb Space Telescope could shed further light on these stars, revealing if the infrared heat comes from natural dusty material or something else.

“Either we’ll rule them all out and say Dyson spheres are quite rare and very hard to find, or they’ll hang around as candidates and we’ll study the heck out of them,” says Wright.

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