OPEC estimates higher demand for OPEC+ crude - ING

The oil market edged lower with ICE Brent trading below $75/bbl this morning following the reports that US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the recent numbers from the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) inventory report were soft for the oil market, ING's commodity analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey notes.

Trump and Putin agree to start negotiations on Ukraine

"In its monthly report, OPEC left its global oil demand growth estimate unchanged at 1.45m b/d and 1.43m b/d for 2025 and 2026 respectively. On the supply side, the group revised down non-OPEC+ supply by 0.1m b/d for 2025 which shall help increase the requirement for OPEC crude. The group expects demand for OPEC+ crude to increase from 42.2m b/d in 2024 to 42.6m b/d in 2025 and 42.9 mb/d in 2026."

"The group warned about the uncertainty over the supply-demand balance due to the tariffs from the US. In the short term, the OPEC trimmed output by 121k b/d MoM to 26.67m b/d in January. This decline was largely driven by Nigeria (-29k b/d), the UAE (-37k b/d), Iran (-14k b/d) and Venezuela (-17k b/d). The IEA will be releasing its monthly oil market report later today."

"US weekly inventory numbers from the EIA yesterday show that the US commercial crude oil inventories (excluding SPR) increased by 4.1m barrels over the last week, well above the 2.5m barrels the market expected. However, this was lower than the 9m barrels build reported by API the previous day. The build was larger when factoring in the SPR, with total US crude oil inventories rising by 4.3m barrels. Total US commercial crude oil stocks stand at 428m barrels, the highest since 22 November 2024."