"But these numbers have to be viewed as worrisome for consumers," said John Kingston, Platts global director of oil. "Although the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that OPEC only needs to supply the market with 29.3 million b/d in the second quarter to keep inventories balanced, from a full-year perspective it must supply about 30.4 million bpd," he explained, with the heaviest supply needs coming in the third and fourth quarters respectively, of 30.5 million b/d and more than 31 million p/d.
"So OPEC has to add a significant amount of supply in the market, just to keep inventories from declining further later this year," Kingston said. "And those estimates don't include any extra surge of OPEC oil that would be needed should the US Gulf of Mexico get hit by a significant hurricane in the coming months."
Total production from all 12 members, including Iraq which does not participate in OPEC output pacts and Angola which joined the group at the beginning of this year, rose by 80,000 b/d to 30.19 million b/d, the survey estimated.
Small drops in output from Indonesia and Venezuela totaling 20,000 b/d were more than offset by increases totaling 100,000 b/d from Nigeria, Iraq and Angola, the survey showed.
