Oil market eerily calm, despite conflicts: IEA
The oil market is "eerily" calm despite conflicts in key regions, undermined by weak demand which is holding down oil prices, the IEA said on Tuesday.
"Despite armed conflict in Libya, Iraq and Ukraine, the oil market today looks better supplied than expected, the International Energy Agency said lowering its forecasts for oil demand this year and next.
There were even reports of "an oil glut" in the Atlantic basin, it said.
"Oil prices seem almost eerily calm in the face of mounting geopolitical risks spanning an unusually large swathe of the oil-producing world," it said, referring in particular to Iraq and the advance of Islamic State fighters towards Kirkuk oilfields until US air strikes halted their gains.
The IEA, the oil policy arm of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said it was cutting its demand forecasts because consumption in the second quarter was weak.
It also cited weaker than expected global growth as a reason, noting that the International Monetary Fund had lowered its forecast for global economic growth this year by 0.3 percentage points to 3.4 percent. The IEA also lowered its forecast for demand in 2015.
A "surprisingly steep" reduction of oil demand recently had come on top of "the effect of relentless North American supply growth", the IEA said.
That was a reference to the development of shale energy in North America which the agency has already said is changing the structure of global energy markets.
Meanwhile, the IEA estimated that across the 34 OECD advanced democracies, demand had "plunged by a combined 440,000 bd in the last quarter, and OECD refining activity was "exceptionally weak" in June.
Some of the conflict factors, which could be expected to raise tension and prices on the oil market, might even work in the opposite direction as a "downside risk" to prices, the agency said.
Libya, where some oil facilities were believed to have resumed amid a high level of disruption in the country, was reportedly having difficulty funding buyers for this renewed production.
"US and EU sanctions on the Russian oil sector are not providing oil markets with much support either," the monthly report said. "The consensus in the industry seems to be that neither set of sanctions will have any tangible near-term impact on supplies."
Comments