Crude oil prices were range-bound in March, with supply outages in the MENA and Russia-Ukraine tensions countering seasonally weaker demand. By early April, market expectations of an imminent restart of Libyan exports pressured Brent prices lower. Brent last traded at $107.75/bbl.The forecast of global demand growth has been marginally trimmed to 1.3 mb/d for 2014, reflecting downward adjustments to the projection of Russian demand. The absolute demand estimate remains roughly unchanged, as upward revisions to baseline non-OECD Asian demand counterbalance lower Russian growth.

Global supplies plunged by 1.2 mb/d to 91.75 mb/d in March, led by steeply lower OPEC output, but remained up by 1.1 mb/d year-on-year, as non‐OPEC growth of 1.98 mb/d more than offset a near-1‑mb/d drop in OPEC crude. Reduced FSU supply expectations helped cut the non-OPEC supply growth forecast by 250 kb/d, to 1.5 mb/d.

OPEC crude oil supplies plummeted by 890 kb/d, to 29.62 mb/d, in March, on lower supplies from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Libya. The ‘call on OPEC crude and stock change’ for the remainder of the year was raised by 300 kb/d to average 30.2 mb/d, reflecting a reduced forecast of non-OPEC supplies.

Total OECD commercial oil inventories inched down by 6.5 mb in February, to 2 567 mb, narrowing the deficit to their five-year average to 115 mb. Total industry stocks covered 29.4 days of demand at end-month. Preliminary data suggest that Japanese destocking helped slash OECD stocks counter-seasonally by 31.1 mb/d in March.

Global refinery crude demand is set to drop by 2.0 mb/d from February through April on planned maintenance in the Atlantic basin and the Pacific. Throughputs are set to average 75.9 mb/d in 2Q14, down from 76.4 mb/d in 1Q14, but up 0.9 mb/d on the year on higher runs in the US, Russia and the Middle East.
Source: IEA