PARIS: The global oil market is returning to a rough balance but Russia's annexation of Crimea has clouded the outlook with both supply and demand growth to slow, the International Energy Agency said Friday.
While the IEA has recently been warning of tight markets as oil demand picks up with a recovery of the global economy, it said stocks had improved and a slowdown in the Russian economy would also help relieve pressure.
The IEA left its global demand forecast for 2014 roughly unchanged at 92.7 million barrels per day (mbd), and a trim to its forecast for growth in non-OPEC supplies means the global market will need more oil from the cartel later this year.
"One month after the events in Crimea, market watchers are taking stock of their impact on oil markets," said the Paris-based institution which analyses energy markets for the world's top oil-consuming nations.
"Given the still volatile nature of the situation on the ground, there are more questions than answers," the IEA said in its monthly oil report.
Based on the World Bank's reduced growth forecast of 1.1 percent for Russia in 2014, the IEA trimmed its forecast for Russian oil consumption which it said roughly compensated for upward revisions to emerging market demand in Asia.
However Russian officials have warned that growth could be even more meagre, or that the economy could even contract as the World Bank forecast could happen under an "adverse scenario" of tighter sanctions.
Currently Western sanctions target some of Russian President Vladimir Putin's top allies and the Bank Rossiya, a lender described as a "crony bank" for Russian elites.
Washington has pledged to target the broader Russian economy if the Kremlin intervenes in eastern Ukraine where pro-Moscow activists have over the past few days seized government buildings and vowed to vote on splitting from the ex-Soviet country.
The 1.8 percent contraction that the World Bank forecast for the Russian economy this year under its adverse scenario would result in a drop in oil demand by another 0.15 mbd to 3.3 mbd.
The IEA noted that at the current moment the drop in demand growth is counterbalanced by a drop in 0.25 in the supply growth forecast due to lower expectations of output from Russia and Kazakhstan.
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