The IEA Oil Market Report (OMR) for April raised its forecast of 2015 global oil demand by 90,000 barrels per day (90 kb/d) to 93.6mn barrels per day (mb/d), a gain of 1.1 mb/d on the year.
This acceleration from 2014’s 0.7 mb/d growth builds on cold first-quarter temperatures and a steadily improving global economic backdrop.
Global supply rose by an estimated 1 mb/d during March, to 95.2 mb/d, as OPEC production recorded its highest monthly increase in nearly four years.
Year-on-year gains totalling a whopping 3.5 mb/d were split between OPEC and non-OPEC production.
The report said OPEC crude oil output soared by 890 kb/d in March, to 31.02 mb/d, on sharply higher Saudi Arabian, Iraqi and Libyan supplies.
The OMR “call on OPEC crude and stock change” was revised marginally higher for the current quarter, to 30.35 mb/d, above the group’s official production ceiling, but left unchanged for full 2015 from the March Report, at 29.5 mb/d.
OECD industry stocks slipped by 1.7 mb in February, despite a massive 36.4 mb build in crude oil stocks.
Preliminary data show OECD inventories up a counter-seasonal 29.2 mb in March, as US crude holdings extended recent builds and refined products defied seasonal trends.
Global refinery crude demand is expected to fall seasonally to 77.3 mb/d in the current quarter, from 78 mb/d in the first quarter of the year.
While Atlantic Basin refiners mostly completed turnarounds in the last quarter, Asian refinery maintenance is set to ramp up sharply this quarter, with up to 2.5 mb/d of distillation capacity offline at its peak in May.
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