bymuratdeniz
A guest post by D Coyne
The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for January 2023 was published recently. The last month reported in most of the OPEC charts that follow is December 2022 and output reported for OPEC nations is crude oil output in thousands of barrels per day (kb/d). In most of the OPEC charts that follow the blue line is monthly output and the red line is the centered twelve-month average (CTMA) output.
OPEC crude output was revised lower in October 2022 by 12 kb/d compared to last month’s report and November 2022 OPEC crude output was revised higher by 53 kb/d. OPEC output has increased by 1088 kb/d since December 2021, from 27883 kb/d to 28971 kb/d in December 2022. When the World was at its centered twelve-month average peak for C+C output in August 2018, OPEC crude output was 31237 kb/d (as shown on the chart), December 2022 OPEC crude output was 2266 kb/d below that level.
In the chart below we have Russian C + C and OPEC crude oil output. The centered 12-month average (CTMA) of output for OPEC13 crude and Russian C+C was 42443 kb/d in August 2018 when World C+C output was at its centered 12-month average peak, output for Russia and OPEC was 2622 kb/d below the August 2018 CTMA at 39811 kb/d in December 2022. In the past 12 months OPEC and Russian output has increased by 1025 kb/d from 38786 kb/d in December 2021.
World Oil Supply (all liquids) was 101.7 Mb/d in December 2022, 7.4 Mb/d higher than output in January 2021, OPEC crude oil output increased by 3.5 Mb/d over the same 23-month period.
OPEC expects the balance of supply and demand to be close to the December 2022 OPEC output level of 28.88 Mb/d from 2022Q4 to 2023Q4. If OPEC’s estimates for future supply and demand are correct, we might expect oil prices to be fairly subdued in 2023, perhaps in the $70-90/bo range for Brent crude.
OPEC stocks are at historically low levels relative to 2009 to 2020, but this has not led to high oil prices of late, it may be that World stock levels are at a comfortable level, unfortunately, the data for World Oil Stock levels is not good.
The chart below is OPEC’s estimate for average annual US tight oil output in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Note that the OPEC estimate for US tight oil output in 2023 looks high, my expectation is that US tight oil average annual output will increase by about 550 kb/d from 2022 to 2023.
Editor’s Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.
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