VIENNA – The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) forecast the world will need less of its crude next year, even as global oil demand growth rebounds to its strongest pace since 2010, amid competing supply sources. Demand for OPEC's crude will slip by 300,000 barrels a day next year to 29.6 million a day next year, or about 2.6 percent less than the 12-member group is pumping now, the organization said in its first set of forecasts for 2014. The need for OPEC's crude will diminish even as global oil demand growth recovers to 1 million barrels a day in 2014, from 800,000 a day this year, amid rising output in the US and Canada. “The strong growth trend seen in 2013 is expected to continue in 2014” for production from outside OPEC, the organization's Vienna-based secretariat said in its monthly market report Wednesday. Dependence on OPEC's crude is slipping as the US and Canada unlock unconventional oil supplies from deep underground shale deposits with new drilling techniques. Brent crude futures have slipped 2.7 percent this year, trading at about $108 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange today, amid signs of slowing growth in China and uneven recovery in the US, the world's biggest oil consumers. – SG/Agencies
