Asia’s rising oil demand
The Asia region consumes 40 percent of the international demand for oil and gas and that demand is expected to increase by 120 percent by 2030 according to Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah. Key figures from Asia’s major oil producing and consuming nations are meeting to discuss ways their countries can work together to increase market transparency, stabilize petroleum prices and improve the oil and gas investment climate.
Al-Attiyah believes most of this increase in demand will be met by an over 50 percent increase in oil and gas production in the Mideast. He also expressed concern over the current low price and demand for oil and how that affects the current level of investment in oil and gas projects.
From Globalia Magazine, the quoted source is Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah:
Sheikh Ahmad stressed the importance of Tokyo roundtable, saying, “Having such dialogue between Asia’s resource producers and consumers is very meaningful in order to adopt cooperative methods and learn concerns of both sides.” The third Asian Ministerial Energy Roundtable Meeting comes as crude oil prices have fallen to around USD 51 per barrel, a nearly 65 percent plunge from a record of USD 147 last July as the global recession dampens demand for the fuel, spurring cutbacks in oil and gas exploration investments. There is growing concern among governments of both oil producers and consumers over a future supply crunch if recovery of the world economy induces demand growth.
The international economic slowdown has caused the International Energy Agency (IEA) to continue cutting its global oil demand forecast for 2009. The latest cut brought the estimate down to 83.4 million barrels per day, down an additional million barrels from the March forecast.
The co-chair of the meeting, Japanese Economy Trade and Industry Minister Toshihiro Nikai, said an additional goal of the gathering was to discuss the human resources development and cooperation between National Oil Companies (NOC) and International Oil Companies (IOC).
Published Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 4:56 am and filed under Industry News.