Some of the world’s biggest names in oil trading and analyzing can’t seem to get on the same page when it comes to predicting what will happen next for the volatile commodity.
Some, like Jeffrey Currie of Goldman Sachs and Christyan Malek of JPMorgan, according to the Financial Times, are confident that oil is ready for the next supercycle—a prolonged rise in the price of oil.
And when they refer to this rise, they’re talking $80, or even $100 per barrel.
Others, like oil analyst Arjun Murti who correctly predicted the last $100+ per barrel achievement seen between 2008 and 2014, say that talk of this next supercycle may be a bit hasty.
For Malek, he sees a situation where demand outstrips supply, before “we don’t need it in the years to come.”
The reason for supercycle predictions is simple: stimulus packages, most notably the stimulus package that the U.S. government is expected to roll out, are expected to boost consumption.
And according to Currie, this stimulus will create a “significant, commodity-intensive consumption” as the stimulus package is mostly targeting lower and middle-income households.
“These people don’t drive Teslas,” Currie explained. “They drive SUVs”.
Murti, on the other hand, thinks that if oil demand were to increase by a half a million barrels per day over the next year, it wouldn’t be enough to outstrip supply.
As a point of reference, global oil demand sank roughly 10 million barrels per day as a result of the pandemic in 2020.
If, however, oil demand were to pick up steam by as much as 1.4 million barrels per day, a supercycle may follow.
Veteran trader Pierre Andurand told the Financial Times that the fate of oil prices rests on OPEC—specifically on how much oil they supply.
Standing in the way of the next supercycle, says Andurand, could be Iran returning to the global oil markets, and OPEC’s production in general.
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Retired veteran trader—a particularly successful one that made a not-so-small fortune on oil’s last supercycle—Andy Hall, sees the oil market in “terminal decline” the Financial Times writes, and likened any price rally as a dead cat bounce.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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One only needs common sense and correct reading of the trends in the market to realize that if Brent crude oil price has so far surged above $63 at a time when the global economy is still virtually in lockdown, then there is an almost certain probability that with the return of the global economy to its normal business activities soon, Brent could be expected to hit $70-$80 in the third quarter of 2021 and average $60-$65 for the year. Moreover, global oil demand is projected to return to pre-pandemic level of 101 mbd by the middle of this year.
Oil prices are currently in a bull market underpinned by strengthening fundamentals in the market, accelerating depletion of global oil inventories, almost total compliance by OPEC+ with the production cuts and insatiable thirst for oil by China and India. To this could be added the huge $1.9 trillion stimulus of the US economy.
Whether you name it supercycle or a trending upward, oil prices could be expected to hit $100 in the second half of 2022 or early 2023.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London