Non-OPEC Supply

Next year’s growth in demand will be met by new supply from outside OPEC, according to WorldWatch., which forecasts that Brent will slip to average $98 a barrel next year, the third- lowest of the 30 predictions tracked by WorldWatch.
Risks are overwhelmingly to the downside,  current prices are high enough to act as a break on economic expansion.
About 60 percent of the 900,000 barrel-a-day increase in non-OPEC supply in 2013 will come from North America, WorldWatch estimates, as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, allow the extraction of shale oil from rock formations in North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas.
The boom in U.S. production has triggered a 7.7 percent drop this year in West Texas Intermediate crude, the nation’s benchmark grade. WTI has averaged $17.46 a barrel less than Brent this year, a record discount in annual terms, as new output floods into tanks at the U.S. storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. The price difference was $19.90 today.