The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) forecast on Tuesday that the world oil demand next year would show an increase of 0.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) after two consecutive years of negative growth, amounting to 84.34 mb/d.
According to the monthly oil market report of OPEC released on Tuesday in Vienna, the growth of global oil demand depended mainly on the pace of the global economic recovery. The International Energy Agency (IEA) also forecast recently that the oil demand for next year would be positive.
The global oil demand forecast released by the IEA on July 10 said that the world's crude oil demand would increase by 1.7 percent, or 1.4 mb/d, in 2010, amounting to 85.2 mb/d.
In the future market analysis of OPEC's latest monthly report, the growth in world oil demand was still uneven.
At present, although crude oil demand in the United States was showing slight improvement reflecting better industrial production activities, there was no sign of recovery in the other OECD regions, which was the main reason for the continual drop in international crude oil demand this year.
According to the OPEC report, the crude oil demand in the United States would increase on average by 0.2 mb/d in 2010, while the demand of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) would keep declining by 0.3 mb/d. The non-OECD countries would make up the bulk of the increase, growing by 0.8 mb/d.
In addition, the report pointed out, in 2009 the global demand for crude oil would see an average decline of 1.65 mb/d compared to 2008.
OPEC oil prices failed to break through 70 U.S. dollars a barrel in mid-June and are now once again back to near 60 U.S. dollars a barrel. On July 13, OPEC's average daily oil prices dropped to 59.66 U.S. dollars./.