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This year, the Earth will burn an average of 104.32 million barrels of oil per day, 2.1 million barrels per day more than in 2023 and 135,000 barrels less than forecast a month ago.
On Monday, OPEC slightly lowered its forecast for world oil demand growth in 2024 to 2.07% and 1.71% in 2025, mainly due to the slowdown in China’s “black gold” consumption.
The planet will burn an average of 104.32 million barrels of oil per day this year, 2.1 million barrels per day in 2023 and 135,000 barrels less than forecast a month ago, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said in a monthly report released today in Vienna.
In addition, the document released today reduced its previous forecast for oil consumption in 2025 by 200,000 barrels per day to 106.11 million barrels per day.
The forecasts are based on world economic growth of 2.9%, with the same rate this year and next.
The report explained that the downward revision in oil consumption reflects “slower expectations for China’s oil demand growth in 2024” and adjustments related to new market data for the first six months.
Despite the downward revision in forecasts, OPEC still stressed that market dynamics are “healthy”, especially this year, with demand growth “well above the 1.4 million barrels per day recorded before the coronavirus pandemic.”
But he acknowledged that “uncertainties related to China’s economic outlook and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, coupled with a stronger dollar, have limited the upward momentum in oil prices.”
In this context, remember the recovery in the January-April period, when Brent and WTI prices appreciated by 12.4% and 14.3%, respectively, and these gains subsequently disappeared in the May-July period.
Today Brent crude is trading above $80/bbl, while WTI is trading near $78/bbl.
Among the factors driving the downturn, OPEC highlighted “concerns about China’s economic performance.”
He added: “Market sentiment is also being affected by uncertainty over central bank monetary policy, particularly the prospect of high interest rates in the US for a long time to combat persistent inflation.”
Regarding oil supply, the report, like last month, predicts that non-OPEC+ supply (OPEC and its allies including Russia) will increase by 1.2 million bpd in 2024 and 1.1 million bpd in 2025 to 53 million bpd.
The United States, Brazil, Canada and Norway will be the producers with the largest increases in crude oil production.
On the other hand, the OPEC+ alliance is maintaining deep supply cuts under the existing agreement.
However, the group’s combined production rose to about 41 million barrels last month, up 117,000 barrels a day from June, according to data from independent agencies published in the document.
Saudi Arabia (+97,000 bpd), Iraq (+57,000 bpd) and Iran (+20,000 bpd) were the largest contributors to this increase, outweighing reductions in Kazakhstan, Russia and Libya.
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