According to the recent February report of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries regarding the oil market, the OPEC oil production nearly didn’t change during January compared with December’s 2011 oil production levels. IEA revised down again its projection for the global oil demand in 2012.
OPEC’s crude oil production reached 30,898 thousand bbl/d in January compared with 30,842 thousand bbl/d in December. Libya’s oil production sharply increased again by 191 thousand bbl/d to 990 thousand bbl/d after it was nearly zero during most of 2011. The current production levels are still well below Libya’s average of 1.6 million bbl/d in 2010.
The rest of OPEC countries nearly didn’t change their oil quotas during January. But there was a 106 thousand bbl/d decrease in the production of Saudi Arabia.
The revised oil supply of non-OPEC countries is estimated at 52.40 million bbl/d in 2011, an increase of 0.10 million bbl/d compared with 2010’s oil supply. This revised estimate is slightly lower than last month’s report.
During the passing week, the IEA – International Energy Agency also published its monthly report on the global crude oil market as of January 2012.
The global oil demand projection was revised down again and currently the projected growth for 2012 is 0.8 mbbl/d or 0.9% growth (compared with a previous estimate of 1.1 mbbl/d).
In the report, the OECD industry oil inventories also decreased by 40.8 million bbl to 2,611 million bbl. The oil stockpiles are still well below the 5-year average for the sixth consecutive month; this means the oil market is still tight for OECD countries, mainly in Europe; this condition is probably among the reasons for expanding the gap between Brent oil and WTI in recent weeks.
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