SE Asian oil demand declining

SE Asian oil demand declining

PERTH (Reuters): Financial turmoil in Southeast Asia has had the effect of reducing daily oil demand in the region by about 100,000 barrels per day (bpd), an industry analyst said yesterday.

"The centre of gravity of energy demand has now shifted from Asia to the United States," Fereidun Fesharaki, director of energy and minerals at the Hawaii-based East-West Centre told Reuters.

"In the U.S., oil demand and gas demand are bigger than anywhere else in terms of growth," he said. "This year, the U.S.'s oil demand is growing faster than China's oil demand."

World growth in oil demand this year was 1.8 million bpd with growth in Asia about 650,000 bpd, Fesharaki said.

"So some one-third of the growth is coming from Asia, compared to two or three years ago when 80 percent of growth was coming from Asia," he said.

Turning to demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG), proposed new developments costing billions of dollars in Asia and Australia by major international oil companies were over- estimating demand requirements in the early part of the next decade, Fesharaki said.

Mobil Corp earlier on Wednesday said it had made progress on its proposed A$8 billion development of the Gorgon gas field in Indian Ocean off Western Australia by 2003.

The British Petroleum Co Plc (BP.L) a day earlier said it was studying a 4.4 million-tons-a-year integrated LNG project in Papua New Guinea at a cost of around A$3 billion.

On an even larger scale, a Woodside Petroleum (WPL.AX)-led consortium aims to double LNG production from the North West Shelf, near the Gorgon field, to some 14 million tons annually.