US, Brazil, UK to drive non-OPEC crude supply growth in 2019 - OPEC

LONDON (ICIS)--Investment in the US onshore sector, new projects in Brazil and higher output in the UK are likely to drive non-OPEC crude oil supply growth in 2019, although North American transportation bottlenecks continue to complicate the picture, oil cartel OPEC said on Wednesday. Oil supply growth from non-OPEC countries rose to 2.5m bbl/day in 2018 on the back of higher-than-expected gains in Russia and North America, with US tight oil accounting for 2.13m bbl/day of the total. Non-OPEC supply growth for 2019 is projected at 2.16m bbl/day, according to OPEC’s November Monthly Oil Market Report, a downward revision of 80,000 bbl/day from the previous month’s estimate. The downward revision is significantly less than the 400,000 bbl/day non-OPEC production cuts agreed at a summit last week, indicating that the cartel expects productivity increases by some non-OPEC states to outstrip reductions by signatories to the latest deal.