Medium-Term Oil Market Report 2013

The global oil market will undergo sweeping changes over the next five years. The 2013 Medium-Term Oil Market Report evaluates the impact of these changes on the global oil system by 2018 based on current expectations of economic growth, existing or announced policies and regulations, commercially proven technologies, field decline rates, and investment programmes (upstream, midstream and downstream). This Report shows why the ongoing North American hydrocarbon revolution is a game changer. The region’s expected contribution to supply growth, however impressive, is only part of the story: Crude quality, infrastructure requirements, current regulations, and the potential for replication elsewhere are bound to spark a chain reaction that will leave few links in the global oil supply chain unaffected. North America is expected to lead medium-term supply growth, the East-of-Suez region is in the lead on the demand side. Non-OECD oil demand, led by Asia and the Middle East, looks set to overtake the OECD for the first time as early as 2Q13 and will widen its lead afterwards. Non-OECD economies are already home to over half global refining capacity. With that share only expected to grow by 2018, the non-OECD region will be firmly entrenched as the world’s largest crude importer. These and other changes are carefully laid out in this Report, which also examines recent and future changes in global oil storage, shifts in OPEC production capacity and crude and product trade, and the consequences of the ongoing refinery construction boom in emerging markets and developing economies.