Recently, OPEC released its monthly market report, focusing on oil production activity in the United States. OPEC said that although economic activity has recovered widely, the shale oil industry has shown few signs of recovery and oil production in the US will fall again this year.

OPEC lowered its forecast for non-OPEC production growth in 2021 by 200,000 b/d, decreased to 700,000 b/d, the report showed. Canada, Norway, Brazil and China would drive broadly non-OPEC supply growth, OPEC said, but persisting low capital expenditure and the cold snow weather in February implied that, after a drop of 800,000 barrels a day last year, the US supplies would be expected to fall by 100,000 barrels a day this year.

In its report, OPEC left its forecast for global oil demand in 2021 unchanged. OPEC forecasts that oil consumption will rise by 6 million b/d, increase to 96.5 million b/d this year, with the global demand of 3.5% lower than that before the anti-epidemic restrictions were put in place. The post-pandemic global economic recovery, has promoted a recovery in oil demand, but the global economic recovery has also been different in recent months, due to the different achievements in governments in controlling the number of COVID-19 cases and promoting vaccination programs. Some countries, including the US, China and the UK, have eased travel restrictions, despite the resurgence of COVID-19 in India and Brazil in recent months. Against this background of fast changes and uncertainty, OPEC still raised its forecast for global growth in 2021 by 0.1%, increased to 5.5%, while the global economic lowered by 3.5% in 2020.