On June 11th, Caixin reported that the OPEC monthly report showed that despite lower-than-expected consumption in the first quarter, the organization maintains its prediction of relatively strong growth in global oil demand in 2024 and 2025. After the report was released, international oil prices remained stable.

The monthly report shows that global oil demand will increase by 2.2 million barrels per day in 2024 and 1.8 million barrels per day in 2025. Both of these forecasts remain unchanged from last month. The average year-on-year growth of global oil demand is expected to be 2.3 million barrels per day in the second half of this year.

OPEC has raised its forecast for oil demand in the second quarter of 2024 by 50,000 barrels per day, but lowered its forecast for oil demand in the first quarter by 50,000 barrels per day. It is expected that the average oil demand in 2024 will reach 104.5 million barrels per day.

The OPEC report is the latest signal of a strong oil market in the second half of this year. On Monday, international oil prices rose by 3%. Previously, Goldman Sachs said that transportation demand will drive the market to experience a supply shortage in the third quarter.

The monthly report points out that although a few major economies, namely the United States and Japan, experienced some economic weakness in the first quarter, the global economy continued to grow steadily in the first quarter.

Economic growth in non-OECD economies remains strong, and the growth of the BRICS countries is even better than expected. If the growth of major OECD economies accelerates in the second half of the year, and non-OECD economies maintain their growth momentum in the first half of the year, this year's economic growth may further improve. Currently, the global economic growth forecast for 2024 is 2.8%, and for 2025 it is 2.9%, unchanged from last month's forecast.

However, analysts believe that in order to achieve a more sustained recovery, some favorable news is fundamentally needed, such as a reduction in borrowing costs. The European Central Bank and the Bank of Canada both announced a 25 basis point rate cut last week.

The monthly report points out that major central banks around the world (especially the United States, the eurozone and the UK) are expected to turn to more loose monetary policies in the second half of the year, depending on the growth trends of various economies and inflation developments.

From an industry perspective, the improvement of industrial production in non-OECD economies is very obvious, while the industrial production of OECD economies is expected to gradually recover from the weak level since the beginning of the year in the second half of the year.

Globally, the service industry maintains a stable development trend. It is expected that this factor will become the main contributor to economic growth in the second half of the year, especially with the support of the tourism industry, which will have a positive impact on oil demand.

Just at the beginning of this month, OPEC + agreed to extend all production reduction measures until next year. Currently, the reduction under the measure is about 2.2 million barrels per day, including a reduction of 1 million barrels per day from the largest oil-producing country, Saudi Arabia. However, the document stated that these voluntary production reduction measures will remain unchanged at the current level within the next three months, and will gradually relax until September next year.

In addition, OPEC believes that global oil consumption will continue to rise in the next 20 years, while the IEA predicts that oil consumption will peak in 2030 as the world transitions to cleaner energy. The two sides have clear differences on this issue and related issues such as the need for more investment in the oil industry.

Regarding the recent weakness in oil prices, OPEC said: 'Due to speculative selling, expectations of easing geopolitical crises, uncertainty in central bank monetary policy, and complex economic indicators that affect market sentiment, oil prices have experienced declines and market volatility has increased.'