The world can cope for now with the loss of about one million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Alaska and Nigeria, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today.
But the agency said the pressure is on Opec to fill the gap as it bumped its estimate of demand for Opec oil by 600,000 bpd in the third quarter and 200,000 bpd in the fourth. That would squeeze Opec's spare production capacity, which the IEA reckons is around two million bpd.
Oil prices hit record highs above $78 this week after BP said it was cutting output at its Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska because of pipeline corrosion.
The prospect of losing 8 per cent of US production came on top of supply disruptions in Nigeria, Iraq and worries over the reliability of Iran's exports.
"For the time being the market can cope with current outages but in the light of the many possible threats to output, including the current hurricane season, there is little doubt that the upstream spare capacity cushion remains thin," the IEA, adviser to 26 industrialised countries, said in its monthly report.
"While Prudhoe Bay represents a significant outage, there are potential offsets, from Saudi Arabia, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and above trend refiner stocks."
The loss of output from Prudhoe Bay forced the Paris-based agency to cut its 2006 forecast for non-Opec supply by 220,000 bpd to 51.1 million bpd and shave the 2007 figure by 30,000 bpd to 53 million.
It kept its outlook for global oil demand this year and next steady from its previous report. Demand for this year is expected to grow by 1.2 million bpd to 84.8 million bpd, while growth in 2007 is set to quicken to 1.6 million bpd, said the IEA.