KSA oil exports earn SR608bn in 7 months

Saudi Arabia's oil exports in the first seven months of the current year yielded around SR608 billion, an economic expert was quoted as saying by local media.
Local consumption stood at 499 million barrels, or 25 percent of the total production during the same period, Fahad bin Juma told Al-Riyadh.
Citing projections from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Juma said the Kingdom was expected to achieve $142 billion in oil revenues in the first half of the current year (January-June period).
EIA estimates that Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), excluding Iran, earned about $982 billion in net oil export revenues in 2012, a five percent increase from 2011.
Saudi Arabia earned the largest share of these earnings, $311 billion in 2012, representing approximately 32 percent of total OPEC revenues.
Total OPEC oil revenues are expected to shrink by 4 percent from $940 billion in 2013 to $903 billion in 2014, Juma said citing EIA estimates.
Commenting on oil future contracts during the second half of 2013, Juma said NYMEX prices are projected to decline from $104.6 per barrel in September to $101 in December this year whereas prices of Brent will go down from $107 to $105 during the same period.
Accordingly, oil prices will decline slightly thus reflecting weakness in global demand and increase in supply.
The price gap between West Texas and Brent began to shrink significantly to less than $3 from $23 in the past months, he was quoted as saying.
In this context, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said the production growth of shale oil in North America will in the next year lead the largest rates of increase in oil supplies of producers outside the OPEC countries and meet global demand that will automatically cut the share of OPEC countries in the market.
The IEA has earlier predicted that global demand on oil would go down by 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the current year, or 90.6 million barrels per day (mbpd) but still higher by 0.9 percent compared to the figures of 2012.
It said oil demand will rise to its highest level in 2014 since 2010 but the supply situation will remain stabilized to a larger extent and avoid swift oil price hikes.