by DantesPeak » Wed 07 May 2008, 00:47:48
I'm speechless. Mr. "oil is going back to $40" now says oil will reach $150. What's going on here???
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')all Street Journal
May 7, 2008
Some see oil at $150 a barrel this year
Crude rose $1.87 to $121.84 a barrel, a surge that is prompting analysts to forecast prices of over $150 a barrel.
A growing number of oil-market watchers say voters riled by soaring fuel costs may face far worse this summer, as factors ranging from unrest in Nigeria to slumping production in Russia could shove benchmark oil prices over $150 a barrel.
U.S. benchmark crude notched another record Tuesday, settling at $121.84 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Nymex crude oil so far this year is up 27% and is now 17% above its previous inflation-adjusted record in April 1980. It is up 96% from a year ago.
WHAT ANALYSTS THINK
A widely followed Goldman Sachs analyst predicted in a client note that oil prices could climb as high as $200 a barrel over the next two years, but said that where prices will top out still "remains a major uncertainty.''Oil's seemingly unstoppable surge has led some analysts to issue gloomier price outlooks. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which predicted the latest run-up, says the world may face a "super-spike" in which crude ranges from $150 to $200 a barrel as early as October, up from just over $120 now.
"That would put oil at unprecedented price levels, even going back to just after the Civil War," said Stephen Brown, an energy economist at the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. A sustained price of $150 a barrel, he estimates, would shave around 1.8% percentage points off U.S. economic output in the first year, and a further 1.5% in the second year. The U.S. economy in the first quarter grew at an anemic 0.6% annual pace.
At the pump, $150 oil translates into gasoline prices of more than $4.50 a gallon.
"It's not that the genie is out of the bottle -- it's that 100 genies are out of the bottle," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Normally known for optimistic forecasts of lowering oil prices, Mr. Yergin's firm now says the price could rise to $150 a barrel this year.
The world's diminished spare production capacity remains the strongest single catalyst for high prices, Mr. Yergin says. The world's safety cushion -- the amount of readily available oil that could be pumped in a moment of crisis -- is now around two million barrels a day, according to most estimates. That's just 2.3% of daily demand, and nearly all of the safety cushion is in one country, Saudi Arabia. Everyone else is pretty much pumping all they can, which makes the world vulnerable to political or other shocks.
Moneyweb/WSJ
