The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) lowered its forecast for global crude oil prices for 2021 and 2022 on Tuesday, citing concerns about future demand while expecting higher output from OPEC+ and accelerating growth in US tight oil production.
In the August Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the EIA revised its Brent crude oil price outlook for 2021 to an average of $68.71 per barrel, marking a decrease of $0.07 per barrel, or 0.1%, compared to the July STEO.
For 2022, it forecasts that Brent will be $66.04 per barrel, a fall of $0.60 per barrel, or 0.9%, compared to the previous outlook.
In the July STEO, the EIA said it anticipated a larger increase in OPEC production levels than the organization announced, as well as some degree of new crude oil production in response to rising crude oil demand globally.
'In this month’s STEO we have adjusted OPEC crude production in 2021 down by 300,000 barrels per day (b/d) (0.9%) and production in 2022 up by 40,000 (b/d) (0.1%) in response to the final OPEC+ announcement, while global production has been reduced by 290,000 (b/d) (0.3%) in 2021 and by 20,000 (b/d) (less than 0.1%) in 2022,' it said.
The statistics agency expects OPEC crude oil production to average 27.6 million (b/d) in the second half of 2021, about 0.6 million b/d lower compared with their previous forecast.
'Our forecast of lower OPEC crude oil production reflects the July 18 OPEC+ announcement that calls for participating countries to collectively increase supply by 0.4 million b/d per month from August to December 2021, a production increase that is lower than we previously anticipated,' it said.
The outlook also included forecasts on global consumption of petroleum and liquid fuels to average 97.6 million b/d for all of 2021, showing a 5.3 million b/d increase from 2020.
'We forecast that global consumption of petroleum and liquid fuels will increase by 3.6 million b/d in 2022 to average 101.2 million b/d,' it added.
Crude oil output in the US is expected to average 11.8 million b/d in 2022, up from 11.1 million b/d in 2021.
By Zeynep Beyza Kilic
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr