The International Energy Agency ( IEA) warned Thursday in its monthly report of a continuous growth of world oil demand, despite high oil prices that have risen to about 65 US dollars a barrel.

The current high prices, compared with 30 dollars a barrel early 2003, have so far had only a "limited" effect in reducing demand and fortunately had not reversed economic growth, said the IEA, an adviser to 26 oil-consuming countries established in 1974 amid the first oil crisis of 1973-74.

According to the Paris-based agency, world oil demand will continue to increase by 2 percent this year to 83.7 million barrels per day and by 2.1 percent in 2006 to reach 85.5 million barrels per day.

It said that although the surge of oil prices had caused a "limited" fall in demand and had led consumers to turn to other sources of energy, high prices "have not completely choked off oil demand growth."

"Neither has the impact been sufficient to reverse economic growth and that is no bad thing," it added.

According to economists, the major victims of the hiking oil prices are developing consumer countries, whose economy is proportionally more relying on energy than developed countries. In some countries such as Yemen or Central American countries, the surge of oil prices has provoked serious social troubles.

The IEA said the current rise of oil prices is partially because of uncertainty on all fronts and low spare production capacity in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

It also deplored again the lack of excess production capacity, considered as a "security pillow" in case of production disruption in one of the major sites.

The IEA also regretted the "wariness on the part of OPEC members to invest in spare capacity".

OPEC in July increased its oil supply by 285,000 barrels per day to 19.6 million barrels owing to increased production by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.

However, estimated demand for oil from OPEC members was steady at 28.2 million barrels per day this year, according to the IEA.

Source: Xinhua