No doubt demand is down in many 3rd world countries. While we have been experiencing record demand here in the U.S., since crude production has been flat someone must be getting by with less.

Your question made me curious about refineries in Africa, so I poked around and found this:

http://www.mbendi.co.za/indy/oilg/ogrf/af/p0005.htm

In the 50 years between 1954 and 2004 48 refineries were built in Africa. In 1954 the first African refineries were built in Algiers (CFP/Total) and Durban (Socony/Mobil). These were followed by the building of Luanda refinery (Petrofina) in 1958, and refineries in Kenya (Shell/BP), Ghana (ENI/Agip), and Senegal (consortium), in 1963. In the 1960’s refineries were also built in Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Tanzania, Nigeria (Port Harcourt I), and Capetown. In the 1970’s, following nationalisation of the oil industry in many countries, several state controlled refineries were built, such as Arzew in Algeria, Warri in Nigeria, CORAF in Congo, and SoNaRa in Cameroon. A final burst of refinery building took place in the 1980’s, including refineries at Warri and Port Harcourt in Nigeria. Whilst there have been a number of modernisation projects since then, the only new refineries built in the past 10 years have been Khartoum in 2001, and MIDOR in Egypt in2002.

Even whilst refineries were being built, others were already being closed. In 1966 the Zimbabwe refinery closed due to sanctions imposed during the UDI period. Between 1980 and 2003 a further 10 uneconomic refineries closed permanently.

All the refineries are basically of the topping/reforming type, except for the 4 refineries in South Africa, 2 in Egypt, 3 in Nigeria, 1 in Cote d’Ivoire, and 1 in Ghana, There are also 3 Synfuel plants (coal and gas feedstock) in South Africa. The total active distillation capacity for the continent is around 3 million b/d (15 million mt/yr), an average of 79,000 b/d per refinery.

The largest refinery in Africa is the Skikda refinery in Algeria (300mbd), the second largest the Ras Lanuf plant in Libya (220mbd). In Sub Saharan Africa the largest are the Port Harcourt refinery I and II in Nigeria (210mbd), and the Shell/BP Sapref refinery in Durban (165mbd).

Be interesting to see some production statistics from some of the African countries, but I am not sure that information is readily available. We end up with anecdotal evidence.

that is a very interesting chart with a very large spread opening up since Feb this year.

if only we could do the same thing for Brent and TAPIS oil price, which i think would track regional gasoline prices a little more closely.

Go back clear through 2006 and you see the exact same pattern as we are seeing now - as summer driving season comes along, the price of gasoline climbs above the price of crude and stays well above or just slightly below til roughly early August when if falls well below crude again.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett