Oil demand in the United States grew at the fastest pace in the
world in 2013, outstripping China for the first time since 1999 as the globe’s
top economy reaped the benefits of a shale boom, Oil Company BP said In its annual review of energy statistics unveiled in Moscow, BP
also raised its global oil reserves estimate by 1.1 percent after revising U.S.
reserves upwards by more than a quarter.
Global natural gas reserves were cut for a second year as lower
provisions for Russia and Qatar offset a significant uptick in U.S. estimates.
BP also said the United States recorded its largest-ever annual rise in oil
production for a second year in a row with a 13.5 percent increase to above 10
million barrels per day (bpd).
The annual review, first published in 1951 and considered an
industry benchmark, showed U.S. oil consumption in 2013 grew by 400,000 bpd to
18.9 million bpd, the sharpest gain in the world, followed by China’s rise of
390,000 bpd to 10.8 million bpd.
The consumption growth was led by an expansion of the U.S.
industrial sector as the world’s top economy emerged from the 2008 financial
crisis, BP Chief Economist Christof Ruhl said.
At the same time, a Chinese slowdown was driven mainly by lower
consumption of diesel and gasoil, which traditionally reflect the rate of
economic growth.
“It is easy to understand the U.S. – If you have a lot of cheap
domestic oil that feeds into the industry, it will show up eventually in GDP
growth numbers. It’s not that easy to reconcile the slowdown in Chinese energy
numbers,” Ruhl said.
China’s economic growth hit a 14-year low in 2013, a decline
that accelerated in the first part of this year as Beijing leads a wide drive
to reform the country’s economy.
Overall, China’s energy consumption growth slowed to around 4.7
percent in 2013 from a 10-year average of 8.4 percent despite the fact that
Beijing officially reported a 7.7 percent rise in gross domestic product last
year, Ruhl said. “There is a lot of tension between the official growth numbers
for China and the official energy consumption numbers for China,” he said.
Global oil production – up 560,000 bpd, or 0.6 percent – failed
to keep pace with growth in oil consumption. Output disruptions from Libya,
Nigeria and Iraq due to political strife were almost entirely offset by growth
of 1.1 million bpd in U.S. output, BP said.
“The huge investments seen in the U.S. have been encouraged and
enabled by a favorable policy regime. And this has resulted in the U.S.
delivering the world’s largest increase in oil production last year. Indeed,
the U.S. increase … was one of the biggest annual oil production increases the
world has ever seen,” Ruhl said.
This balance also explains oil price stability over the past
three years, with the lowest volatility since the early 1970s, he said.
BP raised its estimate of global proved oil reserves by 1.1
percent to 1,687.9 billion barrels at the end of 2013, enough to meet 53.3
years of current global production.
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