* Refiners, offshore producers shut ahead of Hurricane Sally
* IEA trims 2020 demand forecast by 200,000 bpd
* OPEC expects 2020 demand to fall by 9.46 mln bpd
(Updates prices, market activity, adds commentary; changes
byline, dateline, previous LONDON)
By Stephanie Kelly
NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Oil prices edged higher on
Tuesday, supported by hurricane supply disruptions in the United
States, but forecasts of a slower-than-expected recovery in
global demand from the pandemic weighed.
Brent crude rose 24 cents to $39.85 a barrel by
11:04 a.m. EDT (1504 GMT), while U.S. West Texas Intermediate
(WTI) crude futures gained 33 cents to $37.59 a barrel.
Both contracts fell on Monday.
Futures gained ahead of Hurricane Sally's expected landfall
on the U.S. Gulf Coast. More than a fifth of U.S. offshore oil
production was shut and key exporting ports were closed as the
storm's trajectory shifted east toward western Alabama, sparing
some Gulf Coast refineries from high winds.
"Harsh weather events in the U.S. cause some
unpredictability about its oil production and that's always good
news for prices," said Bjornar Tonhaugen, Rystad Energy's head
of oil markets.
But oil demand's outlook remains weak, which limited gains
during the session. The International Energy Agency (IEA) on
Tuesday trimmed its 2020 outlook by 200,000 barrels per day
(bpd) to 91.7 million bpd, citing caution about the pace of
economic recovery.
"We expect the recovery in oil demand to decelerate markedly
in the second half of 2020, with most of the easy gains already
achieved," the IEA said in its monthly report.
The agency said commercial oil stocks in the developed world
hit an all-time high of 3.225 billion barrels in July, and cut
its forecast for implied stock draws for the second half of the
year.
The IEA's demand revision aligns with forecasts from major
oil industry producers and traders. OPEC downgraded its oil
demand forecast and BP said demand might have peaked in
2019.
World oil demand will tumble by 9.46 million bpd this year,
the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in a
monthly report on Monday, more than the 9.06 million bpd decline
OPEC expected a month ago.
Still, a meeting of the OPEC+ joint ministerial committee
on Thursday is not expected to make recommendations for deeper
output cuts, but focus rather on compliance and compensation
mechanisms for its current cuts, sources told Reuters.
Meanwhile, China's crude oil throughput in August rose from
a year ago, reaching its second-highest level on record, as
refineries worked to digest record imports earlier this year.
(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York; additional reporting
by Ahmad Ghaddar in London and Yuka Obayashi in Tokyo; editing
by Susan Fenton and Steve Orlofsky)