BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 16. Global refinery throughputs are expected to rise by 1.8 mb/d year-on-year in 2023, Trend reports citing the latest oil market outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
At the same time, global refinery throughputs fell 730,000 b/d in January, with US still bouncing back from the outages during the Arctic freeze.
However, a further decrease is forecast for February due to scheduled maintenance, the IEA said.
"Despite mild weather in Europe and a seasonal slowdown in road demand, product cracks rallied on supply concerns in the US and ahead of the EU embargo on Russian products coming into force," the report added.
As the IEA noted, if all the refinery launches were to take place as expected, the capacity should be sufficient to meet the demand for oil products this year, even with the expectation of a decline in Russian exports.
"However, with the OPEC+ cuts maintained in our forecast, crude oil supply falls well below refinery demand in the second half of the year. Large crude oil stock draws in the third and the fourth quarters of 2023 could put downward pressure on margins and refinery activity, resulting in significant product deficits, particularly in the last quarter of the year," the agency pointed out.
Meanwhile, according to the IEA's forecast, world oil supply is forecast to increase by 1.2 mb/d to reach 101.3 mb/d, while the demand is expected to rise by 2 mb/d in 2023 to 101.9 mb/d.