The objectives of this study were to evaluate statistically the feasibility of oil recovery from spent automobile rubber tyres in supercritical water (SCW), to determine key process variables affecting the yield of this oil recovery, and to evaluate the destruction efficiency of rubber. Experiments were carried out using a two-level 2(4) factorial design. The qualitative variables were the initial gas phase composition and catalyst choice. The quantitative variables were temperature and contact time. The maximum conversion and oil yield of volatile matter for this rubber tyre were 89 and 68 wt% respectively. Based on the F-test, the variables of greatest significance for both oil yield and rubber conversion were temperature and gaseous atmosphere.