Goldman Sachs: Brent to hit $80 before year-end

  shaheennews-

Oil prices have fallen around 15 percent over the past month, and concerns about oversupply have rushed back. OPEC and the US are both adding enormous volumes of fresh supply, threatening to create a bear market for crude.

However, the souring market sentiment could perhaps outstrip what is justified. Goldman Sachs argues in a report that the loss of supply from Iran, combined with thin spare capacity and resilient oil demand will push prices back up. The investment bank reiterated its forecast for Brent to hit $80 per barrel by the end of the year.

Part of the reason that oil traders have grown pessimistic on oil is that demand suddenly looks shaky. Specifically, demand in emerging markets appears weak, particularly as currencies have weakened against the dollar, which has magnified the price shock for consumers. However, Goldman Sachs says that when digging into the data, demand doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. “Our modeling and tracking suggest however that these concerns are likely excessive,” Goldman analysts wrote.

There are a few reasons for this, the bank argues. Oil demand is still growing at a brisk rate globally. More specifically, Chinese oil demand “continues to surprise to the upside despite the ongoing activity slowdown,” the bank said. Also, the impact of higher fuel prices in local currencies in emerging markets “will remain moderate in 2018 and have dissipated by mid-2019 at current oil and USD levels, which are our base case forecasts.”

Moreover, Goldman Sachs is not buying into the notion of a global economic slowdown, although it admits that this area is a little bit difficult to predict.

The recent narrative in the oil market has focused on the tension between the loss of supply from Iran versus higher OPEC production and weaker demand. The resilience of Iranian oil exports, combined with higher OPEC and US oil production, has led to more pessimism regarding prices. Brent has crashed from around $86 per barrel in early October to the mid-$70s a month later.