A simple analytical expression is proposed in this article to calculate the vibrational contribution to the thermal conductivity of a polyatomic fluid. The analytic expression was obtained based on the assumption that the self-diffusion process is the major mechanism in the transport of vibrational energy. The proposed expression is validated by comparing the thermal conductivity of CO₂ calculated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to experimental data over a wide range of temperature and pressure. It is also demonstrated that the proposed analytic expression greatly increases the accuracy of calculated thermal conductivity for CO₂ at the supercritical state. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.