PARIS: World oil demand is set to be slightly firmer than expected next year because emerging countries are leading the recovery while US consumption is “sluggish,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.
The global crisis has probably removed some demand permanently and energy-saving measures will also bear on consumption in years ahead, the IEA said.
But it raised its estimated price in real inflation-adjusted terms in 2014 to about $76 a barrel from $60 estimated in June, and compared with about $71 in Singapore on Friday. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in January, dropped 75 cents to $69.79 a barrel. Brent North Sea crude for January shed 41 cents to $71.45 a barrel in London afternoon trading.
“Growth (of oil demand) continues to be driven by non-OECD countries, notably in Asia and the Middle East,” the agency said in its monthly review of the oil market.
“Nonetheless, OECD prospects have improved to some extent, particularly in the Pacific.” But the IEA, the energy arm of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, also warned that the US outlook could cloud forecasts.
“Demand remains stubbornly sluggish, with a continued contraction in distillate deliveries and very modest growth in gasoline (petrol) demand.”
The agency said it was holding its estimate for demand in the advanced OECD economies this year broadly unchanged, although it had “slightly adjusted up by 70,000 barrels per day for next year “on the back of an improved outlook for the Pacific, especially in Korea.”
Overall, this meant that in OECD countries this year oil demand would fall in 2009 from the 2008 level by 2.0 million barrels per day or by 4.3 percent to 45.5 million barrels per day.
The IEA said that it now expected global demand for oil this year to be 84.9 million barrels per day, marking a fall of 1.4 million bpd or 1.6 percent from demand last year. Next year, demand would total 86.3 million bpd, an increase from this year’s level of 1.5 million bpd or 1.7 percent.