According to the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in May the supply of oil from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries reached its highest level since August 2012.
OPEC supply in May rose to 31.33 million barrels a day (mb/d), the IEA said.
Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates pumped at record monthly pace to keep output 1 mb/d above OPEC's official supply target for a third month running.
At last week's meeting, OPEC oil ministers decided to maintain
their official production ceiling of 30 mb/d, considering that the global
economic recovery and growing oil demand justified maintaining high
production levels.
The move has been widely seen as an attempt market share and pressure their U.S. rivals.
The U.S oil rig count has now fallen for 26 consecutive weeks through the week ending 5 June indicating that OPEC's strategy seems to be working. Moreover, U.S. shale drillers show how the drop in oil prices hit earnings in the first quarter of 2015.
The IEA also signaled that the U.S. is not the only country suffering supply falls, as demand is slow to rise.
Although global oil supplies fell by
155,000 barrels a day in May to 96 million barrels a day on lower
non-OPEC output, the IEA said, supplies remained "at a steep" three
million barrels a day above the same period in 2014.
The IEA also forecast non-OPEC supply growth to increase by 1 million barrels a day in 2015.
The research body's forecast of global demand growth was revised to 1.7 mb/d for the first quarter of 2015 and 1.4 mb/d for 2015 as a whole. It warned that "momentum is expected to ease somewhat in the second half of 2015, assuming a return to normal weather conditions and given a recent partial recovery in oil prices."
