Total lives with oil at $50, sees $80

Total is living with an oil price assumption of $50 a barrel this year but that could rise to $60 next year and $80 in the next two years, a senior company executive said on Thursday.

“We’re living with $50,” Jean-Jacques Mosconi, head of strategy and planning at Total, told the Reuters Global Energy Summit.

“Next year we see more than that, $60, and then we may be back to $80. Our view is we’re going back to $80 in the next two years.”
U.S. crude has recovered from a low of $32.40 in December, its weakest in nearly five years, to a high this week of $69.05, its strongest since early November.

Earlier on Thursday, U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs raised its end of 2009 oil forecast to $85 a barrel from $65 and introduced a new end of 2010 forecast of $95.

Mosconi said oil at $80 a barrel would be a normal level as far as Total was concerned, but a gradual price rise would be better for a still fragile world economy.

“If the price is rising too much and too quickly, this might damage an economy, which is still not in great shape … the global economy won’t be able to absorb it,” he said.

Reuters