'SLUGGISH' OIL DEMAND FOR DEVELOPED WORLD IN 2010: IEA
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Published by AFP-Yahoo! News
Paris (AFP) – Oil demand in 2010 will be "sluggish" in the developed world, with emerging markets accounting for any increases and top producers switching supplies to eastern growth markets, the IEA said on Friday.
The International Energy Agency also warned of possible "downside risks" to economic recovery for members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 30 of the world's richest economies.
"Oil demand recovery in the OECD will likely remain sluggish," the Paris-based IEA said in its monthly oil market report.
"Demand growth in 2010 derives entirely from outside the OECD," it added.
The IEA left unchanged an earlier forecast of a 1.7-percent rise in demand in 2010 from 2009 to 86.3 million barrels per day (mbd).
The report explained that much of that increase would come from Asian markets and some of it from Latin America and the former Soviet Union.
In the United States, the world's biggest economy and largest oil consumer, the IEA said "demand continues to fall relative to a very weak baseline."
"The US economy remains fragile," the IEA added.
As the map of oil demand changes, the world's biggest producers like Russia and Saudi Arabia are turning their attention to growth markets and reducing supplies to Europe and the United States, the IEA said.
"Saudi Arabia has been increasingly diverting both grades (Arab Heavy and Arab Medium crude oil) to meet growing domestic power generation and higher sales into Asian markets," the report said.
Saudi exports of Arab Heavy to Europe in the first nine months of 2009 were down to just 25 kbd - a crude oil measurement unit - from 90 kbd in 2008 and 110 kbd in 2007, while export volumes to Asia have gone up, it added.
Russia is following a similar trend, with the inauguration in December of a new Asian export terminal in eastern Russia and "a rerouting of crude oil from Baltic and Black Sea ports to the east" in 2010, the IEA continued.
