Opec oil export revenue seen falling another 16 per cent this year - EIA

The countries cushioned most are those in the Arabian Gulf with large financial assets, especially those which have increased production to record levels such as Saudi and the UAE.

Opec oil export revenue, which fell to a 12-year low last year, is expected to decline another 16 per cent this year before rebounding next year, the US government’s Energy Information Agency forecast.

The EIA estimates that oil export revenue for the group as whole will decline from US$404 billion last year, its lowest since 2004, to $341 billion this year, before rebounding to $427 billion next year.

The forecasts are based on oil production and domestic consumption as well as oil prices and the impact on Opec’s members has varied widely as oil prices have collapsed the past two years, the EIA said.

The countries cushioned most are those in the Arabian Gulf with large financial assets, especially those which have increased production to record levels - including Saudi Arabia and the UAE - to alleviate the lower prices.

The hardest hit are countries that have built up no financial buffer, have done little to diversify their economies’ dependence on oil revenue and may also have seen their production hit by conflict and/or mismanagement.

This group includes Venezuela, Nigerian, Libya and Iraq.

The biggest loss of production because of unplanned outages last year was Libya, which lost just over 1 million barrels per day of oil that might otherwise have been exported. The situation is not likely to improve much this year, and EIA forecasts about the same average loss of output.

Nigeria’s politically-driven outages - due to disputes between the central government and opposition (some militant) forces in the delta area, where most of the oil is produced - is getting worse. An average of 270,000 bpd was lost last year but EIA forecast that will rise to 715,000 bpd this year.

Some improvements in Iraq and the lifting of sanctions against Iran this year brought back some lost production, but the EIA reckons that lost production this year will account for 2.3 million bpd, compared with 2.7m bpd last year.

Follow The National's Business section on Twitter