Demand for crude oil will remain steady throughout 2014 at between 29 and 30mbpd according to Opec’s secretary general, Abdalla El-Badri.
“Looking at the current situation, we see the market as relatively balanced and we expect this to be the case for the rest of 2014,” he said.
It is expected that increased production levels in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Southern Iraq will help to mitigate shortfalls elsewhere in the Opec group, as Libya in particular struggles to come back online. Analysts believe that peaks and troughs in the production levels of individual Opec member states will effectively cancel each other out, and that production levels will continue to plateau over the next 12 months.
“Libya still has a lot of work to do regarding opening its ports again. There is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put back into place before production gets back to normal. Recent press reports state that OPEC can manage the extra output from other countries to make up for this shortfall” said Zack Hodge, chief executive officer at oil & gas technology firm, Kore.
Speaking at the recent Petrostrategies International Oil Summit, El-Badri said that he expected oil prices to maintain their current levels of between $104 to $112 per barrel, as they have for the previous year. Opec had previously stated that it expected production levels to rise in 2014, but recent developments have forced it to revise its prediction.
