ZHOUSHAN, China (Reuters) - Oil markets have lost 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude supply this year due to security and political issues but are more concerned about slowing demand, a senior executive at French oil and energy group Total <TOTF.PA> said on Friday.
The political issues that led to the lost crude supply include U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, and disruptions in Saudi Arabia and Libya, Thomas Waymel, Total's president of trading and shipping, said at the International Petroleum and Natural Gas Enterprises Conference in Zhoushan, China.
Saudi Arabia's crude supply in September fell by 770,000 bpd to 9.02 million bpd, the lowest since 2011, following attacks on state oil giant Saudi Aramco's facilities on Sept. 14, according to the International Energy Agency.
A series of incidents in the Gulf since May this year, including drone attacks in the Straits of Hormuz, a major shipping artery for oil, has raised tension in the region, while in North Africa, Libya's largest field had to shut down repeatedly in August due to protests.
But "we can see that the concerns over slowing economy and demand are much more than such unexpected supply disruption," Waymel said, adding that the impact of U.S.-China trade dispute was also not as big as slowing demand in the market.
(Reporting by Shivani Singh, Muyu Xu and Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting by Tom Daly in Beijing Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
