Oil price outlook bleak as inventory rises to record 3 billion barrels

According to latest report by global energy watchdog, International Energy Agency (IEA) inventory has surpassed record level and reached 2.98 billion barrels, which could take many months to deplete to normal level.

Current oil consumption rate is around 92 million barrels/day, so if oil production drops completely it would take more than a month to deplete the inventory and current pace of drop is not even sufficient to remove excess supply from the market. Thanks to innovation and process improvement, cost of oil production has improved lot since last year, key reasons for resilient production. Growth in demand also looks bleak, since it already stands at five year high.

According to IEA, global oil supply has increased 2 million barrels/day from last year to 97 million barrels/day. Resilient pace of production, both from OPEC and non-OPEC has been a key contributing factor. OPEC has been breaching its 30 million barrels/day production quota. This year average production has been around 31.6 million barrels/day, up 1.1 million barrels/day higher from a year ago. Saudi Arabia, has constantly been producing above 10 million barrels/day.

On the other hand, production surge in Russia, which is now producing at fastest pace since Soviet era at 10.8 million barrels/day, pushed overall supply higher than 65 million barrels/day.

IEA expects demand growth to fall to 1.2 million barrels/day next year, from this year's 1.8 million barrels/day.

WTI oil price is currently trading at $41.9/barrel, heading towards 2009 low.