A mostly balanced market in 2018… EIA

From the EIA’s This Week in Petroleum:

“The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) December Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) expects global liquid fuels demand to increase in 2018, but not keep pace with supply growth, resulting in global liquids inventories increasing modestly in 2018. STEO forecasts increasing global liquid fuels inventories by an average of 50,000 barrels per day (b/d) in 2018, a downward revision from a 290,000 b/d inventory increase forecast in the November STEO (Figure 1). The change in STEO is driven by upward historical revisions to Chinese consumption and downward revisions to forecast production from countries within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).”