Riyadh - Mubasher: Both Brent and WTI oil prices rose 17% and 15%, respectively, in August to touch the $50 per barrel mark, according to Aljazira Capital monthly report on Oil and Petrochemicals.
Oil prices started rising since the beginning of August due to a drop in US oil inventories. Later, the dollar decline and the expectation of concerted action by the OPEC to freeze the production level in its meeting in September led to a continuous rise in crude prices, the report indicated.
Oil prices, thus, reached $50 per barrel levels by the third week of August, the report added.
Gobal oil supplies rose 0.8 mbpd in July due to rising production in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) oil market report.
Global oil demand averaged 92.98 mbpd in 2015, with a 1.54 mbpd year-on-year increase, according to OPEC’s monthly report.
In its short-term energy outlook report for August, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) raised the USoil production target by 0.1 mbpd for both 2016 and 2017, taking it to 8.7 mbpd and 8.3 mbpd, respectively.
Brent prices are forecast to average $42 per barrel in 2016, down by $2 per barrel from the last month’s estimates, and $52 per barrel in 2017.
According to the monthly oil market report, OPEC’s oil production increased to 33.11 mbpd in July, the report showed, adding that the Asian refinery margins remained under pressure due to the oversupply of light and middle distillates.
Growth in global oil demand is expected to decline to 1.2 mbpd in 2017 from 1.4 mbpd in 2016, according to the the IEA.
