The aim of projecting future demand and supply is to produce estimates of ‘most likely’ (modal) levels under normal conditions. The methodology and the main factors used in projecting supply and demand are briefly discussed in the relevant sections below. Projections are made for all the elements in Table 1 of the report with the exception of OPEC crude production and global stock change. Instead, a ‘call on OPEC crude plus stock change’ is calculated by subtracting non-OPEC supply plus OPEC NGLs from global demand.

Demand Revisions: Oil demand assessments are reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis. This is true of forecasts as well as of estimates of past demand. Procedures for projecting future demand are detailed below. Historical OECD demand estimates are revised as warranted by resubmissions of monthly demand data by Member countries, especially for recent months. Monthly statistics are also adjusted after Member countries publish their annual demand data, which by definition come with a lag but offer greater detail and are more reliable than monthly estimates.

For non-OECD demand, revisions to historical assessments typically follow the release of new information or corrections to previously published data by the various reporting sources used in compiling the report. Historical assessments are also revised annually to reflect the findings of the IEA’s Energy Statistics of Non-OECD Countries, most commonly referred to as the ‘Green Book’. This annual publication represents the result of extensive research carried out by the Agency’s Energy Statistics Division, in close consultation with the governments of roughly 60 non-OECD countries and international organisations. Green Book reappraisals typically entail substantial adjustments to past estimates of total non-OECD oil demand for a period of several years up to two years prior to publication, with the biggest changes generally affecting the most recent years.

Most Green Book changes are adopted and carried forward to later years in the report’s Annual Statistical Supplement and the figures in the present supplement are generally in line with those that will be released shortly in the 2006 edition of the Green Book (comprising data for 2004). However, there are differences. Those reflect the fact that, unlike the Green Book, the supplement attempts to account not only for oil products delivered through normal channels, but also for that part of domestic trade that by definition tends to fall outside the scope of official statistics. This includes smuggled oil, oil traded or exchanged in the ‘black market’, direct burn, pipeline fill, refinery fuel consumption and, in the case of China, the output of ‘unofficial’ refineries.

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