by John Kemp, June 14, 2017, in  Reuters

The speed and scale at which U.S. shale production has bounced back from the slump in 2015/16 has confounded OPEC and all the other major forecasters.

The oil market is on an unsustainable course with output from U.S. shale and other non-OPEC sources 010increasing rapidly, while OPEC and its allies trim production to reduce inventories and prop up prices.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects non-OPEC output will increase by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2018 (“Oil Market Report”, IEA, June 2017).

If that proves correct, non-OPEC suppliers will capture all the increase in demand next year, because the IEA predicts consumption will increase by only 1.4 million bpd.