The Organisation of
Petroleum  Exporting Countries (OPEC) has lowered its oil output further and is pumping less than this year’s global need for its crude, the exporter group said last Thursday.
This matter is underlining the toll that outages in Libya and elsewhere are taking on production.
The monthly report from OPEC kept unchanged its global supply and demand forecasts.
But OPEC, which pumps a third of the world’s oil, is relatively upbeat on economic prospects, seeing faster growth in 2014 of 3.5 per cent.
The buoyancy is up from 2.9 per cent in 2013 as monetary stimulus continues.
“Further advances throughout the year could be possible, but some downside risk remains,” said the report by economists at OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna.
For now, OPEC expects demand for its crude oil in 2014 to average 29.58 million barrels per day (bpd), virtually unchanged from the previous estimate.
According to secondary sources cited by the report, OPEC lowered its own output to 29.44 million bpd in December, below this year’s forecast demand.
This suggests there will be no surplus crude in the market in 2014 should OPEC keep output at December’s rate.
Rising output would require output cuts from top OPEC exporter Saudi Arabia, say analysts.
Riyadh pumped at a record rate above 10 million bpd in 2013 to compensate for outages and has since throttled back.
According to secondary sources cited by OPEC’s report, Riyadh cut back its output to 9.62 million bpd in December, while Saudi Arabia told OPEC it raised supply to 9.82 million bpd.
OPEC has yet to see any uptick in global oil demand.
It expects world consumption to rise by 1.05 million bpd in 2014, virtually unchanged and less than the increase in supply from countries outside the group.
Another closely watched report on global oil supply and demand, from the International Energy Agency which advises industrialised countries, is due last Tuesday.