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.