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Page added on February 5, 2010

BP says world oil use peak as low as 95M barrels per day

Peak Oil? World oil demand will peak at a maximum of around 110 million barrels per day after 2020, BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said on Thursday in a bold prediction from the head of a major oil company.

The comments come as interest in the view that the world’s oil demand may soon reach a high point and then fall has grown following a drop in global oil use last year due to the economic crisis and efforts to combat climate change.

“It will probably occur beyond 2020, who knows what the number will be, but it will be somewhere between sort of 95 and… 110 million barrels per day probably, versus the 85 we consume today,” Hayward, asked when a peak in demand would come, told BBC Radio 4.

Demand for some key fuels may have reached a high point already in developed markets. The oil industry would never sell more gasoline in the United States or Europe than it had during the boom in 2007, Hayward said.

Some believe oil demand may have already peaked in countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) because of more fuel efficiency and the use of alternatives.

“When we look at the OECD countries, the US, Europe and Japan, I think the level of demand that we have seen in 2006 and 2007, we will never see again,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, told Reuters last month.

Hayward’s comments go further in giving a timeframe and production level at which global demand may peak as growth in emerging countries balances falling consumption in the developed world. London based BP vies with Royal Dutch Shell RDSa. as Europe’s largest oil company by market value.