The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase crude loadings by 0.4 percent in the four weeks to December 18, according to tanker tracker Oil Movements, as winter demand picks up.
OPEC will meet on December 11 in Quito, Ecuador, to review quotas. Shipments will rise to 23.56 million barrels a day in the four weeks to December 18 from 23.47 million barrels in the period to November 20, Oil Movements said today in a report. It’s the eighth consecutive month on month increase, according to the weekly reports. The data exclude Ecuador and Angola.
Shipments from Middle Eastern producers, including those from non OPEC members Oman and Yemen, will rise 0.5 percent to 17.46 million barrels a day from 17.37 million in the four weeks to December 18, data from Oil Movements show.
OPEC will probably keep its output quota unchanged at the December 11 gathering, ministers from Angola, Venezuela said today and yesterday. Oil at $80 to $85 a barrel is a “comfortable price,” Angola’s Minister of Petroleum Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos said. Crude traded at about $86 a barrel today.
A total of 469.22 million barrels of crude will be on board tankers in the month to December 18, up 2.2 percent on the November 20 figure of 458.92 million barrels, according to Oil Movements.
Oil Movements calculates shipments by keeping a tally of tanker rental agreements. Its figures exclude crude held on board ships used as floating storage.
OPEC’s members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Venezuela. Iraq is exempt from the quota system.
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