Crude oil output from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries rose to 30.87 million barrels per day (bpd) in January, says a survey by Platts.

The OPEC output was 30.83 million bpd in December.

According to the survey, which was conducted on OPEC, oil industry officials and analysts, this leaves the organisation over-producing its brand new output ceiling by 870,000 bpd.

A 200,000-bpd increase in Libyan production to 1 million bpd — just 600,000 bpd short of pre-uprising output early last year — more than offset combined reductions totalling 170,000 bpd from Angola, Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela.

The output from UAE also saw a small increase of 10,000 bpd to 2.56 million bpd, the survey said.

“Libyan production is clearly recovering steadily, and it will be interesting to see how the group accommodates these rising volumes...

...especially when OPEC is already substantially over-producing its 30-million bpd ceiling and with the Vienna secretariat forecasting that demand for OPEC crude in the first quarter will be well below current production,” said Mr John Kingston, Platts global director of news.

The survey estimated output from OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia at 9.8 million bpd, unchanged from December.

Demand forecast

Earlier on February 9, OPEC trimmed its demand forecast for crude from its 12 members for 2012 as a whole to 30.04 million bpd from the 30.15 million projected a month ago.

But for the first three months of this year, the organisation slashed its previous forecast by 290,000 bpd to 29.55 million bpd from 29.84 million bpd a month ago.

This suggests that OPEC may need to rein in production over the next two months, the survey said. OPEC ministers in December agreed to set crude output for all 12 members, including Iraq and Libya, at 30 million bpd. But they did not set individual quotas.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW