KUWAIT-- Secretary General of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) Jamal Al-Loughani said on Wednesday that the oil market on the short term is surrounded by uncertainty which makes it difficult to determine crude oil prices.

This came in a statement to KUNA after OAPEC issued its third quarterly report for 2024 on the global petroleum situation, saying that the performance of the global economy remained stable during the third quarter, coinciding with an improvement in the pace of economic activity and potential output in advanced economies.

He said that despite the stability of growth in the performance of the global economy, it carries with it some variation in developments, expecting that the global economy will witness growth at a rate of 3.2 percent during 2025, which is the same rate prevailing during the current year.

He pointed out that the average prices of the OPEC crude basket on a quarterly basis decreased by 7.6 percent compared to the previous quarter, reaching USD 78.8 per barrel, while Brent crude contracts recorded quarterly losses, their largest in a year, amounting to about 17 percent. West Texas crude contracts also recorded its largest quarterly losses since the third quarter of 2023, reaching about 16 percent during the same period.

Al-Loughani noted that global oil supplies (crude oil and natural gas liquids) witnessed a decline of 0.4 percent in the third quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter, reaching 102 million barrels per day. On global demand for oil, Al-Loughani pointed out that it witnessed an increase of 1.3 percent on a quarterly basis to reach 104.7 million barrels per day, supported mainly by the increase in demand in the Americas, Middle East, China, Russia and Africa.

He said that the decline in demand for oil in India, the developing Asian countries, and the rest of the Eurasian countries played a role in limiting the rise in global demand for oil during the third quarter of this year. He noted that the total global commercial and strategic oil reserves decreased by 0.2 percent on a quarterly basis to reach about 9.2 billion barrels at the end of the third quarter of 2024.

He stressed that the developments in the global petroleum market cast a shadow on the levels of economic performance in the OAPEC countries, as the decline in oil revenues had a negative impact on the balances of public finances and the external account.

Despite the ongoing challenges resulting from geographical and economic dispersion, the economies of member states remained committed to economic reforms, which contributed to slowing inflation and enhancing investment and the labour market, he added. 

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