Based on the recent March report published by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries referring to the recent developments in the crude oil market during February, the OPEC oil production slightly increased during February compared with January’s oil production.
OPEC’s crude oil production slightly rose to 30,311 thousand bbl/d in February compared with 30,237 thousand bbl/d in January. This means the total OPEC oil supply inched up by 74.4 thousand during last month. Saudi Arabia’s oil production rose by 40.7 thousand bbl/d to 9,116 thousand bbl/d. Iraq’s oil production also slightly rose by 57.8 thousand bbl/d to reach 3,062 thousand bbl/d. The current production of Libya is still nearly 5% below its average oil production of 1,600 thousand bbl/d back in 2010. Nigeria’s oil production slightly fell to 2,035 thousand bbl/d. Iran’s oil production remained stable at 2,707 thousand, which is around 13% below the average production levels in 2012 and 25% below the production in 2011.
The rest of OPEC countries remained virtually unchanged their oil quotas during February 2013.
The oil supply of non-OPEC countries was revised upwards to an estimate of 53.98 million bbl/d in 2013, a rise of 0.96 million bbl/d compared with 2012’s oil supply.
Assuming that OPEC’s supply will remain unchanged in 2013 at the same quota as in 2012 at 31.15 million bbl/d and adding to that OPEC’s NGL’s and non-conventional oil at an estimate of 5.98 the total global supply will reach in 2013 an estimate of 91.11 million bbl/d.
The total world oil demand forecast for 2013 is estimated to be 89.67 million bbl/d – a growth of 0.84 million bbl/d or less than 1% compared with 2012’s demand.
The estimated gap between supply and demand on a global will reach during 2013 a total of 1.44 million bbl/d (i.e. a surplus of 1,440 thousand barrels), which is higher than last month’s estimated gap. Therefore, if the difference between the supply and the demand with further expand it could suggest that the oil market with further loosen in the months to follow, which will bring down oil prices back to the 80s range.
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