This study examines the growth, conservation, neutrality and feedback hypotheses for 49 countries during the period from 1970 to 2010 using panel causality analysis: this technique accounts for both dependence and heterogeneity across the countries. The results provide evidence as to the direction of causality between oil consumption and output and are consistent with the neutrality hypothesis for 24 countries, the growth hypothesis for 5 countries, the conservation hypothesis for 13 countries, and the feedback hypothesis for 7 countries. The findings provide important policy implications for the 49 countries under study. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.