Oil Prices to Top $60 by Autumn, Analysts Warn

Oil prices will surge through $60 a barrel by the end of the summer, delivering a fresh shock to the global economy at the height of the US ‘driving season’, analysts warn.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan attempted to reassure the oil markets on Friday, saying rising stocks had helped to calm the ‘price frenzy’ that took the cost of crude to record highs earlier in the year.

But Paul Horsnell of Barclays Capital said the $10 price decline over the past month had been a temporary respite, and the market was about to ‘tighten significantly’, pushing the average price of a barrel of crude above $60 in the third quarter of 2005.
The Observer