OPEC needs to boost 2nd-half output: EIA

OPEC will need to boost its output in the second half of 2007 to meet winter heating demand, but it’s too late for the producers’ group to have much impact on U.S. oil supplies this summer, the U.S. government’s top energy forecaster told Reuters on Monday.

“We see a need for OPEC to produce more crude in the second half of 2007 than they produced in the first half,” due to projected demand increases, Guy Caruso, head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), told the Reuters Energy Summit.
OPEC, source of about a third of world oil, appears unlikely to boost its output before its regular meeting in September.

Even if OPEC were to act soon, crude oil from big producers like Saudi Arabia is at least a 45-day tanker journey away from the U.S. Gulf Coast, Caruso said.

“Summer supplies of crude in terms of the long-haul suppliers, that’s pretty much in train now,” he said.

Reuters