US revises up Brent oil forecast by $5 for 2019, 2020

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - The U.S.' Energy Information Administration (EIA) revised up its Brent oil price forecast for 2019 and 2020, according to its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) for May released on Tuesday.

The international benchmark was revised up by $5 per barrel for both this and next year, the STEO showed.

Brent oil is now expected to average $70 per barrel in 2019 and $67 a barrel in 2020. The previous estimates for the benchmark were $65 a barrel for this year, and $62 per barrel for next year, according to the EIA's April STEO.

The upward revision comes as the U.S. administration anticipates a decline in OPEC crude oil production through 2020.

The EIA said it forecasts that OPEC's crude oil output will average 30.3 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2019, down by 1.7 mbpd from 2018. OPEC's crude output is expected to fall further in 2020 by another 0.4 mbpd to approximately 29.9 mbpd.

- US crude production forecast revised up

The report also details that the EIA also revised up the U.S.' crude oil production forecast for both 2019 and 2020.

Crude output in the country is now estimated to average 12.45 mbpd in 2019, compared to the average 12.4 mbpd projected in the report for April.

For 2020, crude production in the U.S. is expected to average 13.4 mbpd, up from the previous forecast of 13.1 mbpd quoted in the April report.

The U.S.' output of crude rose to 11.7 mbpd in November 2018 to overtake Russia as the world's largest crude oil producer.

Crude oil production in the country increased to a new record high level of 12.3 mbpd for the week ending April 26, according to the EIA data.