The agency based in Paris raised its estimate by a daily 60,000 barrels to 86.4 million barrels a day. That's a 2 percent increase from 2009, when global oil demand shrank 1.5 percent.

In its monthly report on the oil markets released Thursday, the IEA also said the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the ongoing oil spill might prove "to be a supply-side game changer." The agency, the energy arm of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a grouping of the world's richest nations, said it cannot be sure what regulatory changes will result. It said an assumption of one to two years of delays for all planned new deepwater oil field projects implies a reduction of up to 300,000 barrels a day in 2015 production from the US Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, oil climbed above $74 per barrel on Thursday. US crude for July rose 47 cents to $74.85 a barrel by 1213 GMT. ICE Brent gained 22 cents to $74.49.

US crude has recovered almost $10 from below $65 on May 20, but is still down 15 percent from a 19-month peak on May 3.

US crude stocks last week dropped a larger-than-expected 1.8 million barrels, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.

That was the same amount by which stockpiles of distillates including heating oil and diesel increased as distillate demand slowed, showing a gain of 9.3 percent in the four weeks ended June 4, compared with 17 percent in the four weeks to May 28.

US gasoline supplies were little changed last week, the EIA said.