OPEC Cuts Still Aren’t Having Enough Of An Impact 06/20/17 •lweb.es/f2870 •bit.ly/2tRQ5Bc
Oil traders are storing more oil at sea amid swelling output in the Atlantic region, a sign the market is far from the kind of re-balancing that OPEC would have hoped for. The amount of oil stored in tankers reached a 2017 high of 111.9 million barrels early June, and higher volumes of storage in the North Sea, Singapore and Iran account for most of the increase. Oil in floating storage has been building at a rate of about 800,000 barrels a day since early May and continues to increase, said a Morgan Stanley report.
The price of oil could fall to $30 next year and stay at that level for about two years, according to Fereidun Fesharaki, chairman of consultants FGE. He said that the current level of cuts implemented by OPEC should keep the oil price around $50 a barrel for the remainder of 2017, but a failure to deepen these cuts would lower prices. Fesharaki stated that the key question was whether there was a limit to US Light Tight Oil production, or whether a boom in shale oil production in Argentina would occur.
According to the 2017 BP Statistical Review, rapid growth and improving prosperity mean growth in energy demand is increasingly coming from developing economies, particularly within Asia, rather than from traditional markets in the OECD. However, the drive to improve energy efficiency is causing global energy consumption overall to decelerate. Global carbon emissions are improving, and this can be traced back to the changes in the pace and pattern of economic growth and energy consumption within China. Globally, wind and solar power grew strongly, accounting for almost a third of the increase in primary energy last year.