Wednesday, February 3, 2010

OPEC MOMR: Oil Demand Recovery Mainly in OECD

I've been somewhat puzzled by the relatively rapid pace in recovery in global oil production. Recall that last time we checked in, global liquid fuel production was recovering at a fairly rapid rate of 3.8 ± 0.4 mbd/year. Here's the graph again:


Looking at the EIA's monthly data suggested the demand recovery seemed to be mostly in Europe, but I didn't find the detailed pattern of that data very convincing.

So this morning, I took a look at the most recent, ie Jan 2010, OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report. That has quarterly consumption data through the end of 2009.  Just to summarize the data, this chart shows the  breakdown of consumption as this report sees it (as usual, click on the report to go to a bigger version).


In general, demand bottomed in Q2 of 2009 at 83.11mbd, and then recovered to 85.36 in Q4, so that's a rate of 2.2 mbd in six months, or 4.4 mbd/year, which seems consistent (within uncertainties) with the production data increase.

We can see the regional pattern better by unstacking the columns:


Or even just looking at the changes from Q2:


This last graph suggests the bulk of the recovery is happening in the OECD.  North America is responsible for about 0.5mbd, western Europe for about 0.7mbd, and the OECD Pacific (Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand) for about 0.6mbd.  So OECD recovery is responsible for about 1.8mbd out of the 2.2mbd overall.  The only other region that's very significant is the FSU with about 0.5mbd of recovery also.  Everywhere else is fairly flat or a little down (including China, according to this data, which contradicts other reports).

I'm not 100% convinced by this yet: I guess I'll check on some other data sources and see if I can substantiate a consistent pattern.

The reason I care is that I'm still trying to get a handle on the likelihood of another major oil price shock in the next few years.

2 comments:

KLR said...

I commented on the US situation this morning at TOD. 33.6% of the YOY decline in the US is in shipping; 15.1% is jet fuel. That's a lot of short term cutback for a country that's supposed to have hit Peak Demand.

Anyway, some of the renewal is perhaps simply seasonality, as my chart of minor products supplied shows. With diesel and resid so down perhaps this seasonal component is making itself more apparent.

I'm going to plug in the percentage changes in 1979-1980 and see what they do for 2008-2009.

Stuart Staniford said...

KLR - well global oil production doesn't have much seasonal signal in, but I guess there is likely to be a seasonal signal in the components of consumption, so I should correct for that before drawing a firm conclusion.