Global oil demand could peak within 20 years driven by a rapid shift towards electric vehicles (EVs), energy consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie has said in a report.

The UK’s Financial Times newspaper quoted Ed Rawle, Wood Mackenzie's head of crude oil research, as saying: “autonomous electric vehicles (EVs) or robo-taxis will really change the face of transport in the coming decades,” adding that the consultancy had reappraised its projections for long-term oil demand.

According to Wood Mackenzie, autonomous EVs and robo taxis will become commercial by 2030 and gain wide acceptance by 2035. Each autonomous EV is forecast to displace more of the oil demand than the conventional EV, the firm predicts.

“They will be on the road far more as they are autonomous, displacing a disproportionate amount of oil-based transport,” the FT quoted Rawle as saying.

Over the next ten years, the biggest curb on oil demand will be fuel efficiency, and gasoline demand is seen as the first oil-based fuel to reach its peak – at around 2030, according to WoodMac.

Other sources of oil demand, including petrochemicals, will grow stronger than gasoline demand, the analysts say.

European oil majors have started to project in recent years that the world is likely to reach peak oil demand within two decades, or probably earlier, and have started to incorporate those projections in their ‘energy transition’ scenarios.

BP, for example, expects peak oil demand in the 2030s, with EVs at around a third of the car market.

Norway’s Equinor expects that peak oil demand could come around 2030 at 111 million barrels a day in the current market, as road transport electrification and efficiency gains in all sectors offset increasing petrochemical and aviation growth.