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This is how much more oil the US uses per person than China and India

Matthew Nitch Smith   

This is how much more oil the US uses per person than China and India
Finance2 min read

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US oil demand per person remains massive, but it peaked over 10 years ago.

The US consumed over 20 barrels of oil a day per person in 2014, according to a report released on Monday by investment research house Bernstein.

This is much more than nations with bigger populations like China or India, who used less than five barrels per person in the same period.

Despite this, demand for oil is falling in developed countries.

The report notes that member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) - which includes the US, UK, Germany, Japan, France and Mexico - already reached peak oil use between 2000 and 2005.

Future growth in oil demand will come from China, it says, which itself will then be outpaced by India.

Here's a chart that shows US oil consumption compared to the rest of the world:

The increase in developing nation oil demand is mainly down to cars and air travel, according to the report. Bernstein adds that it expects the amount of cars on earth, and the amount of air travel, to double by 2040.

"Most of the growth in cars, trucks, air travel, trade volumes, population, and GDP will likely happen in emerging markets. Oil demand peaked in the West in 2005 at around 50 million barrels per day.

"Given the peak in travel speeds, high penetration of transport, and increasingly services-led nature of economic growth in the West, demand from this area will decline from here. Future oil demand will instead come from emerging markets as they converge toward Western economies."

It adds that China's gasoline demand will make it the most important market over the next decade, but India's diesel demand will make it the most important market over the next 25 years.

In the shorter term, oil is still plagued by an oversupply problem and Middle Eastern power struggles, which has seen its price hover around or below the $40 mark for much of 2016.

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