Yesterday, the IEA – International Energy Agency published its monthly report on the global crude oil market as of February 2012.
According to the recent monthly update, during February, OPEC’s oil production rose to 31.42 million bbl/d compared with January’s average oil production; this was mainly due to an increase in Libya’s oil production.
The non-OPEC countries’ oil production rose by only 0.3 mb/d during the first quarter of 2012. According to the report, the low growth was mainly due to the geopolitical tensions and unplanned outages in the North Sea and Canada.
The global oil demand projection wasn’t changed and currently the projected growth for 2012 is 0.8 mbbl/d at 89.9 mbbl/d.
In the report, the OECD industry oil inventories increased by 13.6 million bbl to 2,614 million bbl in January 2012. The oil stockpiles are still below the 5-year average for the seventh consecutive month; this means that the oil market is still tight during January in OECD countries, mainly in Europe; this was probably among the reasons for the rising gap between Brent oil and WTI in recent months.
Current crude oil prices are traded with moderate changes:
Current Nymex crude oil price, short term futures (April 2012 delivery) is traded up by 0.05%, as its at $105.48 per barrel as of 11:54*.
Current Dated Brent spot oil price increases by $0.22/b to $124.84/ barrel as of 11:54*.
(* GMT)
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