IEA Again Ups Forecast for Oil Demand

11 March 2005

The International Energy Agency raised its forecast for global oil demand by 330k barrels per day, to 84.3 million bpd. In the in the March 2005 Oil Market Report, IEA analysts ascribe the increase in demand to a combination of cold weater, more robust US economic growth and the impact of this and other factors on China’s oil demand.

China’s demand is forecast to increase by 100,000 barrels per day, US demand by 120,000.

The IEA sees supply rebounding by 885 kbpd to 84.3 mbpd, thereby matching demand. An improvement from last month’s view in which demand outstripped supply (earlier post), the forecast nevertheless leaves the world market with no tolerance for any sort of substantial outage.

Non-OPEC suppliers added 445 kbpd of that increase, with recovering North American and North Sea supply. Russian output also rose after a four-month decline.

The IEA also revised its view of non-OPEC supply upward by 75 kbpd last year, and 90 kbpd this year. It expects non-OPEC supply to average 51 million barrels per day this year, 925 Kbpd above last year.

OPEC production in February rose 390 kbpd to 29.0 million bpd due to increases from Kuwait, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The call, or the need, on OPEC crude this year is now 28.6 mbpd, up from 28.1 mbpd in 2004.