This web-based User’s Guide to the IEA Oil Market Report (OMR) is designed to provide a broad outline of the OMR methodology together with a glossary of commonly used terms.

Historical OECD demand, supply, refining, stock and trade data are submitted via the Monthly Oil Statistics (MOS) questionnaire, returned electronically to the IEA by the 30 OECD Member countries (consisting of the 27 Member countries of the IEA and the remaining three OECD non-IEA countries, Iceland, Poland and Mexico). MOS submissions provide a complete mass balance for each product including demand, production, imports, exports, stock change and statistical differences. Submissions are made during the seven-to-eight-week period following the month to which the figures relate (i.e. three months before the release of the report) and may include revisions to earlier months. Data are submitted in metric tonnes (and also in volume by the United States) and are converted into barrels using the conversion factors (see ??????). Where necessary, production, demand and trade are estimated, while stock data are assumed unchanged from the previous month’s levels. Preliminary estimates for inland deliveries to the larger oil consumers in the OECD are provided by various national organisations for the month following the latest available MOS data (two months prior to the report’s publication month). Each OECD producing country submits oil production data to the MOS, but these aggregate data are supplemented by information on individual fields provided by governments, oil companies and consultancies. Preliminary stock data are available for the EU plus Norway, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico and the US, while preliminary Euroilstock data are used to calculate the remaining European Union (EU) countries’ stock positions.

There is no formal submission system for non-OECD data. Information is gathered from a variety of government, oil company, consultancy and journalistic sources. The timeliness and degree of detail is highly variable. Historically, up-to-date information has been available for roughly 55% of non-OECD demand, in some cases as quickly as for OECD data, but for others, with a lag of up to six months or longer. For the remaining non-OECD countries, demand figures only became available about 12-18 months after the end of the year in question. However, the release of the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI) database has increased the flow of more timely information and this is included when there is a strong degree of confidence in data quality. When up-to-date data are not available, growth rates are estimated, using GDP/price elasticities and seasonal adjustments. The timeliness of non-OECD supply data varies from preliminary estimates for the month immediately prior to the report for some countries up to a 12-month delay for others.

With substantial time lags involved in obtaining certain supply and demand data, it is not surprising that an exact balance cannot be achieved. Where discrepancies exist, no attempt is made to force a balance by making arbitrary adjustments to the best estimates of demand and supply. Instead, the discrepancy is accounted for in the ‘miscellaneous-to-balance’ item in Table 1 of the report. This item combines changes in non reported stocks in OECD and non-OECD areas, changes in floating storage and oil-in-transit levels and the balancing item required due to errors in any estimate of demand, supply and stock changes elsewhere. Thus, for example, a persistently high positive miscellaneous-to-balance value suggests that either estimates of global demand are too low, that global supply is too high, that there has been a significant increase in non reported stocks in OECD and non-OECD areas, that the OECD stockbuild is too low, or some combination of these factors.

IEA Member countries submit monthly average Cost Insurance Freight (CIF) crude import prices on a monthly basis. Data are averaged for the total number of IEA Member countries using the quantity of crude imports for individual countries by weight. The spot crude and product price assessments are based on daily Platts prices, converted where appropriate to US dollars per barrel according to the Platts specification of products (©2007 Platts, a division of McGraw-Hill Inc.).

Graphs that complement the text of the report show daily price data, while tables found in the text and in Table 13 (available in the tables section on the web site www.oilmarketreport.org) show arithmetic averages by weeks, months, quarters and years.

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