Crude Analysis

Goldman’s Spot-On Forecasts Prompt Questions

Goldman Sachs oil company analyst Arjun N. Murti and commodity analyst Jeffrey Currie are rattling the oil markets — again.

Earlier this month, Murti, 39, and Currie, 41, raised their forecast for crude oil to $141 a barrel for the second half of this year and reiterated their prediction that oil would have a “super-spike” to $150 to $200 a barrel.

Prices jumped immediately. It was the third increase in Goldman price predictions in five months and the fifth time in four years that the firm’s analysts had pushed past what people previously thought possible. Every other time the Goldman team had turned out to be right.

But not everyone’s buying it. “For us, the whole circus concerning analysts mentioning ever higher round numbers has seemed a very hollow one indeed,” Barclays Capital commodities analysts Paul Horsnell and Kevin Norrish said in a scathing commentary last week. “It serves little purpose to start making me-too statements just to serve as a piece of analyst bling.”

If that seems a bit harsh, consider the back story.

Washington Post