SELL ???? One of the biggest oil companies in the world, BP, is not ruling out that the oil demand crash amid COVID-19 and perhaps the subsequent lasting change in people's lifestyle may have already brought about peak oil demand.
The pandemic adds not only a layer of uncertainty in the oil industry in the short term, but it also creates another challenge for the coming years, BP's chief executive Bernard Looney told the Financial Times in an interview published on Tuesday.
"It's not going to make oil more in demand. It's gotten more likely [oil will] be less in demand," Looney told FT.
BP's top executive joins other CEOs of major oil corporations who have recently expressed views that it's not guaranteed that global oil demand will return to its 'normal' pre-virus levels of around 100 million barrels per day (bpd).
"I don't think we know how this is going to play out. I certainly don't know," Looney said. "Could it be peak oil? Possibly. Possibly. I would not write that off," BP's chief executive told FT.
Last month, Shell's chief executive Ben van Beurden said on the earnings call that the current crisis is a "crisis of uncertainty," and we don't know what's on the other side of it, as the supermajor slashed its dividend for the first time since World War II.