BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan.18
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The global diesel demand is expected to break above 2019 levels in September 2021 vs a level around 4 percent below 2019 this quarter, Trend reports citing the US JP Morgan Bank.
“Jet is still the major laggard in our forecast. Globally we see jet and other kerosene demand recovering from a level around 36 percent below 2019 levels in 1Q21 up towards a December 2021 level roughly 21 percent lower than 2019. The key question is the return of international travel, which we expect will continue to severely lag domestic flight activity,” reads a report released by the Bank.
“When we look to our oil demand forecasts, we still think 2021 will be primarily driven by a push higher towards normalcy in mobility but stronger economic tailwinds will also help. To this end, we forecast road fuel demand will begin to push sustainably higher from 2Q21 onwards and see global gasoline demand moving from a level around 8.4 percent below 2019 levels in 1Q21 to broadly on par with 2019 levels in December. In the US and Europe, we still see some slight structural drags including increased working-from-home throughout the entirety of this year and still-boosted unemployment vs 2019 leading to a lag in demand recovery vs other regions like Asia. However, even with this, we forecast US gasoline demand will pull to within 3 percent of 2019 levels by the end of the year (vs -12 percent in 1Q21) while European gasoline demand finishes around 4 percent lower vs 2019 compared to -16 percent in 1Q21.”
Hence there are somewhat stronger recoveries in the US (2021 exit level 18 percent below 2019) and China (2021 exit level 9 percent below 2019) compared to Europe (-25 percent in Dec 21 vs 2019), where 80 percent of flights are international. Overall, we see global oil demand increasing from 93 mbd this quarter (-6 percent vs 2019) to 99 mbd in 4Q21 (-2 percent vs 2019) before finally pulling even with pre-pandemic 2019 levels in May 2022.
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