World Crude Supply And Demand

World Crude Supply And Demand

The world crude prices have made everyone involved in the oil business such as producers, the traders and the refiners very joyfull, for them its better than a huge bonus, in that they now have high Oil prices . The profits that they have made are billions of dollars in cash flow at the expense of helpless consumer in the last months.
Annual world demand for the Crude Oil today is about 82 to 84 million barrels a day. Of which OPEC produces about 38 million barrel a day. Most of the OPEC oil is in Middle East and a bit in Latin American countries. Remaining world demand is met by local production (US in Gulf Coast , Alaska etc.; Europe in North Sea; Russia in the Siberian & Central Asian Oil fields; Canada by the Alberta & Deep sea drilling in the east coast etc.). Smaller producers in Africa and Asia also do their best to fill up the demand. Quite a bit of production is internally consumed by the industrialized and semi industrialized world. Gap in demand and production is imported. US imports 45% of its Crude oil needs from Middle East , Venezuela , Nigeria , and Mexico . Europe and newly industrialized Asia (Including China and India ) import as much as 30 to 60% of its Oil needs. Japan is worst placed, where almost all of its Oil is imported. This supply shortage has given the Crude oil exporters an iron clad stranglehold over the world economies. A minor disruption in supply in Nigeria for example causes a jump in Oil prices in the world markets. Similarly as the bombs start falling anywhere in the Middle East for any reason, it ultimately translates into rising oil prices. Hence the world is a hostage to this situation with no relief in sight for a decade or two.