Projections of oil demand in road transportation sector on the basis of vehicle ownership projections, worldwide: 1972–2020

Abstract

Oil demand in the road transportation section accounts for more than 50% of total world oil consumption amongst the whole sectors, including road, aviation, railway, waterways and international marine transportation. The high demand rate of oil makes this sector the main and major oil consumer in the world. The vehicle ownership or intensity of vehicles is one of the main factors which determines the development of oil demand in this major sector.Vehicle ownership (in 1000 population) is estimated using the nonlinear Gompertz model on the basis of pooled time series (1972–2020) and cross-sections data for 154 countries. Different saturation levels for the selected countries and over time horizon is calculated by adding specific demographic and geographic variables. Then, under two different scenarios – business as usual and policy scenario – we make projections of oil demand in the road transportation sector across 154 countries by using available data up to 2020.According to the results of the model, it is predicted that the number of world total vehicles will be approximately 1.5 times higher in 2020 than in 2008. Moreover, oil demand projections for road transportation over 2009–2020 show that under business as usual scenario, world oil demand will increase to 14,748 million barrel of oil equivalent until 2020 while under the policy scenario, which is based on the fuel efficiency improvement by 20% during a period of 10years until 2020, world oil demand in the aforementioned sector will increase only to 11601 mboe until 2020.