Yes. Though we don't really "need" oil for that. You can make plastics out of any source of carbon and hydrogen.
Oil is just convenient, because you need less energy to make the plastic than if you start with eg water and CO2.
Re:Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage
by JoeAltmaier on Friday May 22, 2020 @10:35AM
(#23272532)
That the whole shooting match right there. "just convenient" is meaningless - we don't make anything unless the cost/benefit works out. If we didn't have oil, it'd be safe to say we'd never have adopted ubiquitous plastic at all.
We'll need oil for plastics even if we stop using it for transportation, and Saudi oil is just about the easiest/cheapest to extract, so we'll be using their oil for a long time, but it won't be as grotesquely profitable for them as in the past.