International Energy Agency Working Group Meetings – November 2022

On the 16th - 17th November 2022, representatives of the Emergency Oil Stocks Agency participated in the meetings of the working groups of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris - the IEA Standing Group on Emergency Questions (SEQ) and the IEA Standing Group on Oil Markets (SOM).

The subject of the SEQ meeting was mainly issues of emergency preparedness in the supply of crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas and electricity. At the meeting, the IEA Secretariat presented the preliminary proposal of the working group to review the storage obligation of the IEA member countries, information and summary data on the collective action of the IEA in 2022 consisting of release of emergency stocks of the member countries, and the results of the emergency response reviews of Australia, South Korea and Greece.

The SOM session was mainly devoted to the current situation on the world oil market. IEA analysts have revised their estimate of year-on-year growth in global oil demand to 2.1 mb/d (million barrels per day) for 2022, compared with an increase of 3.1 mb/d projected before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In the last quarter of 2022, demand is even expected to fall by 0.25 mb/d, with a rebound expected in 2023 after the recovery of demand in China in connection with the relaxation of anti-pandemic measures. In Europe in particular, embargo on the import of Russian crude oil has a great impact, as a result of which the share of European Union countries in the total export of crude oil from Russia fell from 50% to 33%, while further reduction of this share is expected after the tightening of sanctions on Russian crude oil and petroleum products from December 5th, 2022 and from February 5th, 2023.