Today, the IEA – International Energy Agency published its monthly report on the global crude oil market as of December 2011.
According to the report, during December, OPEC’s oil production rose to 30.89 million bbl/d compared with November’s average oil production; this was mainly due to the increase in Libya’s oil production. In December OPEC raised the oil production quota to 30 million bbl/d in 2012.
The global oil supply also rose by 140 kb/d during December 2011, despite the decline in non-OPEC countries’ oil production by 140 kb/d.
The global oil demand projection was revised down again and currently the projected growth for 2012 is 1.1 mbbl/d (compared with a previous estimate of 1.3 mbbl/d).
In the report, the OECD industry oil inventories are estimated to increase by 4.1 million bbl to 2,647 million bbl in November. The oil stockpiles are still well below the 5-year average for the fifth consecutive month; this means that the oil market is still tight in November in OECD countries, mainly in Europe; this was probably among the reasons for keeping the gap between Brent oil and WTI in November and December (despite the contraction of the gap from the high levels it used to be a few months back) and also kept crude oil prices high.
Current crude oil prices are traded with moderate changes:
Current Nymex crude oil price, short term futures (February 2012 delivery) is traded up by 0.51%, as its at $101.22 per barrel as of 12:15*.
Current Dated Brent spot oil price declines by $0.19/b to $111.07/ barrel as of 12:15*.
Euros to US dollar exchange rate is currently traded up at 1.2785 a 0.3836% increase as of 12:18*.
(* GMT)
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