Baku, Azerbaijan, June 4
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
In total, OPEC crude oil production showed a drop of around 400,000 barrels per day (b/d) year-on-year, Trend reports citing OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin.
Reportedly, among non-OPEC countries, the biggest production losses were observed for Mexico and Norway.
“Mexico continues its falling trend with 14 years of production deteriorations in a row, on the back of natural declines at mature fields, as well as investment cuts. Norway has managed to stabilize oil output in recent years, after continue declines for over a decade in the early 2000s. Yet, technical problems on some fields and unplanned shutdowns caused Norway’s 2018 oil supply to decrease by over 100,000 b/d y-o-y,” said the cartel.
OPEC said Brazil was expected to increase its production in 2018 substantially, with a number of subsalt projects coming onstream during this year.
“However, project delays and maintenance shutdowns at some fields were the reasons that not even 2017 production levels could be maintained for crude production and the minor increase in total supply came only from biofuels production,” reads the report.
With regard to countries with increasing oil production in 2018, the cartel believes that output expansions were clearly driven by North America, notably by the United States.
“ Oil supply in the US increased by around 2.3m b/d in the year 2018, representing almost 80 per cent of total non-OPEC supply growth. About 1.6m b/d of the total US supply surge came from crude oil (mainly from tight formation) and 700,000 b/d from non-crude elements (especially of NGLs), marking a growth of 17 per cent and 13 percent, respectively,” said OPEC.
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