Natural gas flaring from oil well [licensed under Creative Commons from Flickr user Sirdle] Most people buy electric cars to reduce oil consumption, but oil companies keep selling more oil every year. Now, a new study by oil industry consultancy Wood Mackenzie predicts that the demand for oil will start to decline as early as 2036, when autonomous cars become more popular. That forecast comes much earlier than many big oil companies predicted. The report was initially covered by the Financial Times (subscription required). READ THIS: Decline of oil: Bloomberg suggests what it could look like Autonomous cars, which are widely expected to be mainly electric, will dramatically increase the number of miles driven on electricity and supplant miles driven on gasoline, the report suggests. “Autonomous electric vehicles or robo-taxis will really change the face of transport in the coming decades,” Ed Rawle, chief economist at Wood Mackenzie told […]