Standard Chartered: Global Oil Demand Hit An All-Time High In August

Momentum in oil markets has continued to skew towards the downside over the past two weeks, with the last 10 trading days seeing front-month Brent record seven lower settlements, eight lower intraday highs and six lower intraday lows.

Meanwhile, the 30-day realized annualized Brent volatility soared to an 11-month high of 39.1% at settlement on 21 October, good for a w/w increase of 3.1 ppt. December Brent declined 1.7% to trade at $$74.80 per barrel at 13.20 pm ET in Wednesday’s intraday session while WTI crude for December delivery fell by a similar margin to trade at $70.55 per barrel.

Last week, we reported that the considerable differences in supply/demand estimates by the leading energy agencies have been making it hard to gauge actual global crude supply. For instance, according to the EIA, the UAE produced just 18kb/d above target in September, while the IEA sees the overrun as a substantial 348 kb/d. However, commodity experts at Standard Chartered have reported that demand concerns remain the biggest bearish catalyst for oil markets.

StanChart notes that on 21 October, Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), stated “This year, global demand is very weak, much weaker than previous years”, incorrectly implying that oil demand is lower than in previous years.

However, StanChart says oil demand growth, not absolute oil demand, is what has been slowing down from earlier post-pandemic years. Indeed, StanChart says global oil demand has been setting a series of new all-time highs in the current year.

The analysts have been able to calculate global demand after the release of the latest Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) data on October 17, and concluded that demand hit an all-time high of 103.79 million barrels per day (mb/d) in August, an upwards surprise of about 450 thousand barrels per day (kb/d) above their (pre-JODI data release) forecast. August becomes the third successive month in which a new all-time demand high has been set, with StanChart working out that demand growth clocked in at 1.32 mb/d in August.

Whereas this is lower demand growth than in all other post-pandemic Augusts, it can hardly be considered weak. StanChart has reported that the largest demand gains in August came from Korea (219 kb/d), Italy (185 kb/d), Saudi Arabia (117 kb/d), Türkey (99 kb/d) and Spain (88 kb/d). StanChart has now revised its 2024 global demand growth estimate upwards to 1.45 mb/d, thanks to the bigger-than-expected growth in August.

StanChart points out that traders continue to ignore the fact that non-OPEC supply has slowed more than demand so far in 2024. According to estimates by the IEA, non-OPEC supply growth slowed down from 2.40 mb/d in 2023 to 0.93 mb/d in 2024, while demand growth slowed down from 1.99 mb/d in 2023 to 0.86 mb/d in 2024. The IEA, therefore, estimates that non-OPEC supply in 2024 has grown slower than supply in 2023 by 1.47 mb/d while demand has slowed by a smaller margin of 1.13 mb/d. Other energy agencies have come up with even larger relative supply-side slowdown estimates than the IEA. For instance, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that non-OPEC supply has slowed by 1.89 mb/d from a year ago (from 2.52 mb/d in 2023 to 0.63 mb/d in 2024) while demand has slowed by 1.19 mb/d (from 2.10mb/d in 2023 to 0.91mb/d in 2024). StanChart estimates that non-OPEC supply has slowed by 1.83 mb/d in 2024 (from 2.50 mb/d in 2023 to 0.67 mb/d in 2024) while demand growth has slowed by 0.60 mb/d (from 2.05 mb/d in 2023 to 1.45 mb/d in 2024).

On the supply side, in the near-term, StanChart has worked out that the IEA model implies a global stock draw of 370 kb/d in Q3-2024, even when you include a potential 1.3 mb/d of [possible] ghost barrels. Further, StanChart’s model shows a small H1-2025 supply deficit of 0.2 mb/d, even if voluntary output cuts are scaled back, but only if Russia, Iraq and Kazakhstan compensate for past overproduction. Back in July, the three OPEC+ members submitted their compensation plans to the OPEC Secretariat for overproduced crude volumes for the first six months of 2024. According to OPEC, the entire over-produced volumes will be fully compensated for over the next 15 months through September 2025, with Russia ‘paying back’ a cumulative 480 kb/d, Iraq 1,184 kb/d and Kazakhstan 620 kb/d.