The World Market for Gasoline and Other Light Oils: A 2007 Global Trade Perspective

On the demand side, exporters and strategic planners approaching the world market face a number of questions. Which countries are supplying gasoline and other light oils? What is the dollar value of these imports? How much do the imports of gasoline and other light oils vary from one country to another? Do exporters serving the world market have similar market shares across the importing countries? Which countries supply the most exports of gasoline and other light oils? Which countries are buying their exports? What is the value of these exports and which countries are the largest buyers? In what follows, Chapter 2 begins by summarizing the regional markets for imported and exported gasoline and other light oils. The total level of imports and exports on a worldwide basis, and those for each region, is based on a model which aggregates across over 150 key country markets and projects these to the current year. From there, each country represents a percent of the world market. This market is served from a number of competitive countries of origin. Based on both demand- and supply-side dynamics, market shares by country of origin are then calculated across each country market destination. These shares lead to a volume of import and export values for each country and are aggregated to regional and world totals. In doing so, we are able to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of both the value of each market and the shares that countries are likely to receive this year. From these figures, rankings are calculated to allow managers to prioritize markets. In this way, all the figures provided in this report are forecasts that can be combined with internal information for strategic planning purposes.