Growth in Asia’s demand may slow “by efforts to efficiency enhancement and oil substitution”, he said.
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Abdullah al-Badri, Secretary-General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said he expects that the oil market will become more balanced in 2016 as demand continues to grow. It also meant the unemployment rate fell to a seven-and-a-half-year low of 5.0 percent. China jostles with the USA for the position of the world’s largest importer, while Japan, South Korea and India also feature high in the list. But attention now seems to have turned to what Chinese demand will look like once the storages have been filled.
A hike in interest rates encourages investors back to USA assets for higher returns, pushing the greenback higher.
Three Indian refiners, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited, Essar Oil Corporation and Indian Oil Corporation together imported 2.61 lakh barrels per day in the first six months of this fiscal year compared with 2.23 lakh bpd a year ago, the government data showed.
Venezuela, which has been advocating coordinated action on oil production to support prices, advanced the idea of agreeing an “equilibrium” global oil price target of $88/barrel at a closely watched technical meeting between a number of OPEC and non-OPEC producers in Vienna October 21.
The country’s largest oil marketing company Indian Oil Corporation is not keen to increase oil imports from the Islamic country unless Iranian oil companies offer huge discounts under renegotiated deals.
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, prices were at $44.70 per barrel on Monday. He pointed out to signals from the United Arab Emirates and Iran as two countries who have called for higher oil prices recently as an indication of increasing disquiet in the oil group. The CEOs of 10 major producers, which account for almost a fifth of the world’s oil and gas output, committed to boosting the share of gas in the energy mix under an “Oil and Gas Climate Initiative”.
The chairman of Saudi Aramco, the state’s oil company, told the Financial Times: “There have been no conversations here that say we should cut production now that we’ve seen the pain”. Analysts said that oversupply would continue to pressure oil markets.
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The writer is Asia Editorial director.
