OPEC maintains oil demand forecast for 2024

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) continues to expect oil demand to grow by 2.2 million barrels a day (bpd) in 2024 and by 1.8 million bpd in 2025, unchanged from its previous estimates.

Meanwhile, the organization lowered its expectation for non-OPEC supply growth to 1 million bpd for 2024 from 1.1 million bpd previously. It indicated that the main drivers of growth are expected to be the US, Canada, Brazil, and Norway.

Growth expectation for 2025 were also revised down to 1.3 million from 1.4 million bpd in the previous month's forecast.

Overall OPEC crude-oil production in March rose slightly to 26.60 million bpd compared with 26.601 million bpd in February.

Oil production from Iran increased by 28,000 bpd to 3.19 million bpd, while Saudi oil production rose by 20,000 bpd to 9.04 million bpd. Nigeria's production instead fell by 38,000 bpd to 1.40 million bpd.

"The robust oil demand outlook for the summer months warrants careful market monitoring, amid ongoing uncertainties, to ensure a sound and sustainable market balance," OPEC said.