Asia drives rise in world oil demand

Gary Park

Petroleum News Calgary correspondent

The International Energy Agency is counting on Asia’s economic recovery, led by a faster-than-anticipated post-SARS recovery in China, to underpin an increasein world oil consumption. The Paris-based forecaster now believes demand for all of 2003 will be 78.4 million barrels per day, 300,000 bpd above revised baseline figures in 2001 and 2002, but its projected growth for 2004 is unchanged at 1.05 million bpd.

The agency said June showed a year-over-year increase of 5 percent after slipping by less than 1 percent in May.

OPEC production climbed to 26.1 million bpd in July, an increase of 155,000 bpd from June, with volumes from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria offsetting drops in Iran and Venezuela. Excluding Iraq, output from the 10 OPEC members dropped by 60,000 bpd, within range of the 25.4 million bpd target set on June 1.

Non-OPEC production has been lowered for the year by 87,000 bpd to 49 million bpd and was trimmed by 46,000 bpd for 2004 to 50.4 million bpd, with most of the cuts stemming from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Western Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia.