Crude oil prices steadied earlier today after gaining more than 1% on Thursday on the news of production shutdowns in Libya.
However, analysts believe the benchmarks are still set for a monthly decline as pessimism about demand continues to weigh. In two recent oil price forecast updates, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley lowered their expectations about Brent crude and WTI citing disappointing demand from China.
Goldman earlier this week reduced its price forecast by $5 to between $70 and $85 per barrel of Brent crude, citing, besides Chinese demand, also rising U.S. shale production and high global inventories. That's despite a substantial decline in global oil inventories over the first half of the year. Morgan Stanley also revised its oil price forecast earlier this month, citing the same factors as Goldman.
Neither bank, however, could have foreseen the events unfolding in Libya that could literally decimate its oil production, which as of July stood at close to 1.2 million barrels daily. As of yesterday, this had fallen to less than 600,000 barrels daily, Reuters reported earlier.
What's more, Iraq's output could also decline from September as the country seeks to compensate for overproduction under the OPEC+ output cuts agreement.
Even with these bullish developments, oil will likely post a monthly decline as the demand outlook remains the dominant factor determining trading decisions. And that's despite the fact that oil imports to Asia this month will be higher than they were in July, signaling a recovery in demand. This in turn means that OPEC will hardly be phasing out any cuts anytime soon.
"The market is concerned about the medium-term outlook, with oil balances for 2025 looking weak," ANZ analysts said in a note this week, as quoted by Reuters. "We believe OPEC will have no choice but to delay the phase out of voluntary production cuts if it wants higher prices."
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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Why do you hate oil?
If Biden had built the rest of KEYSTONE XL, most of your inflation problems would have been mitigated.
ML