The Vienna-based OPEC secretariat said the revisions took into account “recently received weak third-quarter data,” including “downward revisions for the OECD Americas and OECD Asia-Pacific.”
Despite the significant downgrade, OPEC’s forecasts remain significantly higher than those of the rest of the oil industry and diverge from actual data on consumption this year.
The coalition’s 2024 growth forecast is about twice that of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and significantly higher than that of the International Energy Agency in Paris. This is significantly higher than estimates by Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco.
OPEC expects oil consumption to average 103.82 million barrels per day this year. The forecast for growth in 2025 has been lowered by 90,000 barrels per day to 1.4 million barrels per day.
The failure to accurately estimate this year’s oil demand casts further doubt on OPEC’s long-term forecast that oil consumption will continue to rise until mid-century, a view held by a minority within the oil industry. is.
OPEC+ is cutting back on production starting in 2022 in a bid to stem the surplus and raise prices. With last week’s decision, the company’s plan is to gradually restart its halted production of 2.2 million barrels per day between April and the end of 2026.
