OPEC to Bolster Shipments on Winter Demand, Oil Movements Says
January 05, 2012, 11:52 AM ESTBy Grant Smith
Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase shipments of crude oil this month to meet winter demand for heating fuels, according to tanker-tracker Oil Movements.
OPEC will ship 23.64 million barrels a day in the four weeks to Jan. 21, up 0.3 percent from the 23.58 million barrels loaded daily in the month to Dec. 24, the Halifax, England-based researcher said today in an e-mailed report. The figures exclude Angola and Ecuador.
“Crude demand is heading for another winter peak,” which is typically in the middle of February, Roy Mason, founder of Oil Movements, said by phone. “OPEC supply is coming up again, and in the background of course you’ve got more Libyan crude. It’s mostly Asian demand.”
Exports from Middle Eastern producers, including non-OPEC members Oman and Yemen, will be little changed at 17.87 million barrels a day, according to estimates from Oil Movements.
Crude on board tankers will average 476.65 million barrels in the four-week period to Jan. 21, down 2.6 percent from 489.62 million in the period to Dec. 24, according to today’s report. Oil Movements calculates shipments by tallying tanker-rental agreements. Its figures exclude crude held on board ships as floating storage.
OPEC’s members, which pump 40 percent of the world’s oil, are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
--Editors: Rachel Graham, Raj Rajendran
To contact the reporter on this story: Grant Smith in London at gsmith52@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss on sev@bloomberg.net
