World oil demand will grow next year for the first time since 2007 and return to pre-recession levels by 2012, according to a newly released report.

World oil demand is expected to grow by 900,000 barrels to 84.6 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2010, and return to its 2007 high of 86.5 mbd by 2012, the report released Tuesday by IHS-Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a U.S. energy information provider, said.

Oil demand dropped by 2.8 mbd from its 2007 high to 83.8 mbd in 2009. The last time that the world experienced such a severe decline in oil consumption was in the early 1980s and it took nine years for demand to return to the 1979 pre-recession high.

The current recovery will come more quickly than the last major oil crash in the 1980s thanks to robust demand from emerging markets and fewer options for substituting fuels on a global scale, said Jim Burkhard, managing director of global oil research for the firm. "In the 1980s the largest area of the demand decline came from power generation, where oil was replaced by readily available substitutes like coal, gas or nuclear," Burkhard said. "Today, global demand growth is coming from the transportation sector in emerging markets where there are fewer large-scale options for switching fuels," he said.