Opportunities for oil and gas despite demand worry: Total CEO

The oil industry must accept that global demand for crude may fall by 2050 but rich potential remains in hydrocarbons, especially gas, the head of French energy giant Total said Tuesday.

Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne said climate policies and electric cars would affect demand for oil in the next three decades.

"It is possible that by 2040-2050 oil demand will not be as high as it is today," he told the World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul. 

"It is a scenario that is possible" if the targets of the 2015 Paris climate accord are implemented, he said. 

But Pouyanne insisted there would remain a demand for oil, even if electric cars prove a success, as there is no substitute in sight for fossil fuels in heavy trucks and planes.

"I urge the industry to be responsible as there is plenty of opportunity for all of us," he said.

"We have to have competitive oil assets to face demand that may not be as high as we expected."

He described gas as the "ideal carbon of the future" that could be used alongside renewables.

"We have to bet on gas," he said

Pouyanne described the fall in the oil price over the last years from highs of 145 dollars a barrel in 2008 to around 45 dollars now as "traumatic" but said the industry had shown a capacity to change.

As well as showing greater efficiencies, energy majors could still show what he described as a "pioneer spirit", he said, pointing to his own company's return to Iran.

Total on July 3 defied US pressure by signing a multi-billion-dollar gas deal with Iran, the first by a European firm in more than a decade.