Oil demand may exceed supply by 2019 – Trafigura

Reuters out with comments from an executive with commodities trading house Trafigura, noting that the global oil demand may be between 2 million to 4 million bpd more than worldwide crude supply by the end of 2019.

The global oil demand is likely to outpace supply as exploration spending has declined amid weaker prices.

Ben Luckock, Trafigura’s co-head of group market risk, at an industry conference in Singapore, said: “When we count up the barrels across the next couple of years, we are coming up short. As prices plummeted, so did upstream spending.”

“The nature of oil reservoirs is that they deplete, and shale reservoirs deplete even faster than the average. That means you need to replace something in the order of 9 million barrels per day over the next two years,” Luckock added.