The renewable energy revolution may be well and truly underway, but the world has a long way to go to wean itself off oil.

The companies involved in oil and gas have been losing money hand over fist for years, but demand for oil continues to rise.

Independent oil and gas analyst and author of StockAnalysis, Peter Strachan, puts that down to a range of factors from the need for transport fuel alternatives to the global population explosion.

"If we look at the oil and gas companies in Australia, it's really just Woodside and Oil Search that have actively and consistently made profits," he said

"Since the global financial crisis in 2008 those two companies have stayed in the black.

"Other companies, including Santos, Beach, AWE, Tap Oil, in fact any company that's produced oil and gas in the last nine years.

"If you add up all their profits, including write-down of assets, they're all well in the red and have just burnt up value for shareholders."

A conservative estimate of the losses and write-down of the companies mentioned is $2.9 billion in the last financial year.

The price today per barrel of West Texas crude oil is $S43.50 ($57.65) but companies were even losing money when it was double that price.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 7 minutes 55 seconds 7 m Peter Strachan, oil analyst, StockAnalysis author, on oil and gas company woes and rising demand for oil. ( Babs McHugh ) Download 7.3 MB

"Even BHP, which has a massive light-tight oil business in the US and they've invested about $US27 billion in the last seven years, that business has been written down to around $US12 billion, even though last year it was producing 340,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) a day.

"And even in 2012, when the oil price was double what it is now, and the gas price was double what it is now, it was costing that business $US2 billion to keep it going."

Companies suffer under low price while oil demand soars

With that litany of woe, who or what entity would be interested in getting into an oil and gas business?

According to Mr Strachan, plenty. Cashed-up investors looking for the quick returns, which have eventuated in the past.

But the main reason is demand. Those looking at long-term investments look at the demand for transport fuels, demand for plastics, demand for chemicals, demand for fertilisers, demand for pharmaceuticals, demand for building products and so on.

Transport fuel is about 40 per cent of all oil used, and there are currently no viable alternatives for many of the other uses at this time.

"The global demand for oil is rising at 1.2 million barrels per day every year," Mr Strachan said.

"Consumption of oil now about 94 million barrels of oil a day, that includes oil and condensate and LPG, and biofuels and all the other types of liquids.

"It's probably about 80 billion barrels of actual oil, and 94 million barrels of hydrocarbon liquids that are being consumed every year; and that just keeps going up by over a million barrels of oil a day every year.

"Next year it will be 95 million barrels, and the year after that 96 (million), so there's a lot of demand for this high-density energy product that we call crude oil and it's not going away.'

"Definitely countries are moving towards less polluting forms of electricity generation, but even with the best will in the world, fossil fuels still supply about 85 per cent of the worlds power generation.

"Nuclear is about 5-6 per cent, hydropower is about 4-5 per cent and the rest, about 5 per cent, is renewables."

Mr Strachan, who stood as a former senate candidate for the Sustainable Population Party in the Western Australian election in 2014, said the population explosion alone would drive increased oil demand.

"In the beginning of the industrial revolution there were 800 million people on the planet. We've increased that nine-fold in 250 years.

"We've added 6.6 billion people, and even in the last 100 years we've added 5.4 billion.

"The population is rising by 80 million people a year, these people will all want toasters, they'll want to drive cars, have hot water, need energy and food.

"And the food is produced by fertilisers and pesticides and by diesel. I mean, we're actually turning petrochemicals into food to feed us.

"Without the diesel and the pesticides and the fertilisers, most of which are petrochemically based, we wouldn't be able to produce the amount of food using organic techniques as we can produce today. And we'll need more."