Projections of Oil Demand for Road Transport on the Basis of Vehicle Ownership Projections, Worldwide: 1972-2020

This paper predicts oil demand for road transport across 154 countries by using available data to project demand up to 2020. Oil demand for road transport accounts for more than 50% of total world oil demand. Vehicle ownership (in 1000 population) is estimated using the nonlinear Gompertz model by pooled time series cross-sections data for all countries of the world. Different saturation levels for countries and over time are estimated by using demographic and geographic variables. Oil demand is estimated as the product of vehicle stock and “oil use pervehicle” under two scenarios, In the “policy scenario” alternative fuels and technologies and new regulations are deemed to affect the oil demand. Oil demand for road transport for the sample of 154 countries is expected to be 14748 million barrels in 2020 with a 50% increase of the vehicle fleet under the business as usual scenario. However, if measures are taken to reduce per vehicle use fuel use under the "policy scenario", total demand will only increase to 11601 million barrels demonstrating a 20% savings.