The chief executive of French oil and gas company Total SA (TOT) said the world will never be able to produce more than 89 million barrels of oil a day, the Financial Times newspaper reported on its Web site.
Christophe de Margerie cited high costs in areas such as Canada and political restrictions in countries like Iran and Iraq, the newspaper reported Sunday.
De Margerie said he had revised downward his forecast for 2015 by at least 4 million barrels a day due to the global economic crisis and falling oil prices, the report said.
It quoted de Margerie as saying that national oil companies, which control most of the world's oil, and independent producers, which play an important role in finding new sources, are "substantially limited in their ability to fund investments in the current (financial) environment."