The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will boost crude supplies to the highest level in nine months as Libya continues to restore production, according to tanker-tracker Oil Movements.
OPEC will ship 23.63 million barrels a day in the four weeks to Jan. 7, up from the 23.23 million barrels shipped daily in the month to Dec. 10, the Halifax, England-based researcher said today in an e-mailed report. Libya is exporting about 500,000 barrels a day, according to the company.
“It’s nearly all Libya,” Roy Mason, founder of Oil Movements, said by phone. “The Middle East has reached a peak for the winter. The increase is a more or less normal winter event; the real difference is the Libyans are adding to it.”
Exports from Middle Eastern producers, including non-OPEC members Oman and Yemen, are set to increase by 1.7 percent to 17.86 million barrels a day, compared with 17.57 million in the four weeks to Dec. 10, according to estimates from Oil Movements.
Crude on board tankers will average 484.77 million barrels in the four-week period to Jan. 7, up 0.3 percent from 483.28 million in the period to Dec. 10, according to today’s report. Oil Movements calculates shipments by tallying tanker-rental agreements. Its figures exclude crude held on board ships as floating storage.
OPEC’s members, which pump 40 percent of the world’s oil, are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
(Source: Bloomberg)
