PARIS, April 10: The International Energy Agency expects world demand for oil to grow by 1.1 million barrels per day this year, it said in its March report on Thursday.

This figure means that the IEA is maintaining its earlier estimate.

Total demand was estimated to be 78 million barrels per day in 2003, it said.

Global oil production increased to 80.27 million barrels a day in March, up one per cent on February’s levels.

Demand had grown by 2.4 per cent in the first three months of 2003 but would expand at a lower rate for the remainder of the year, the IEA said.

A higher demand for fuel to to the US-led military intervention in Iraq had been largely offset by falling airline activity, hit by both the conflict and the outbreak of the pneumonia-like SARS virus.

Members outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — which groups 30 industrialized democracies — would account for 46 per cent of oil demand growth, up from the 42 per cent predicted in February, the IEA said.

Production by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), but excluding Iraq, stood at 25.86 million barrels a day last month, 1.4 million barrels a day higher than the ceiling set by the cartel.

Iraq accounted for a further 1.46 million barrels per day in March, the IEA said, but added that the country’s short-term production capacity in the wake of the US-led invasion remained unclear.

“While the damage to oil infrastructure appears limited so far, the timetable and the size of the recovery of production in Iraq and Nigeria are uncertain.”

War in Iraq had reduced Iraq’s production by around one million barrels a day, the IEA said, while ethnic unrest in the Niger Delta region had cut Nigeria’s oil output by around 200,000 barrels a day.—AFP