Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Oil to $40 a Barrel

From the Financial Times: it appears that oil prices may not only dip below $50, but may fall to $40 a barrel.

A recent meeting of the national oil companies in Beijing had predicted oil prices would fall to about $40 a barrel, Fu Chengyu, chief executive of China National Offshore Oil Corporation, told a conference in Barcelona.

“The consensus at the time was that everybody realised the oil price would be even lower,” Mr Fu told the Global China Business meeting. “Nobody knew where it would be but most of them said around $40.”

I wrote that it's unlikely that oil will fall below $50 a barrel. The Saudis are unlikely to allow this. They're the only ones that can make a huge change in the price of oil unilaterally.

Even with a production cut from OPEC, decreasing demand is still cutting into the price of oil. It's even dropped below $2.00 in Palatine Bridge.

2 comments:

CKAinRedStateUSA said...

Listening to talk radio tonight while commuting, I heard an economist (?) speculate that within a week or so, gas at the pump could be $1.50 per gallon, if not less.

But we still need to drill onshore, offshore, and not be lulled into sleep by these prices.

Anonymous said...

As Obama said on 60 Minutes, agreeing with ckainredstateusa, we can't afford to be lulled. His approach includes investigating and encouraging other forms of energy. The automakers' financial problems may well be an opportunity to force them to produce vehicles that don't exclusively require gasoline and may therefore also cause less polution.