Opposing forces will affect oil market balance

Sluggish demand growth may be matched by an almost as equally anaemic lift in output

The oil market in 2020 will, in our view, be dominated by three key themes—the global economic slowdown, the ongoing drop in momentum in the US shale industry, and the sticky non-Opec production growth. These are opposing forces with material impact on the oil market balance for 2020.  Oil demand worries are not going away. The global economic slowdown combined with the US-China tariff war clearly hit oil demand growth. In light of this, we expect oil demand to grow by 0.8mn bl/d year-on-year in 2019, compared to 5-year average growth of 1.5mn bl/d year-on-year. The growth rate is almost halved, demonstrating the impact of the economic slowdown.  Our expectation is that the global economic s