Senior oil market analyst at Rystad Energy says prices could hit $130 by June if the conflict in Eastern Europe hampers supply lines.
Ms Dickson said:
- Oil prices are soaring with no end in sight as the news of Russia’s full-scale military incursion of Ukraine, immediately putting at risk up to 1 million bpd of Russian crude oil exports transiting through Ukraine and the Black Sea
- The Brent benchmark smashed the $100 mark and prices are only set to climb further on low storage inventories and export disruptions
- Prices could approach $130 per barrel by June if the Ukrainian conflict disrupts Russian crude flows, but that estimate could soar higher if additional disruptions materialize
Professor Alex Kemp of Aberdeen University has also tipped high commodity prices to hold fast until a clear resolution becomes apparent.
At the time of writing Brent crude was sitting at around $104 a barrel.
Professor Kemp said:
- I would expect such high prices to maintain in the near term while the problem of the Russian invasion works its way through
- It’s likely that relatively high oil & gas prices will hold fast until there’s some resolution to the Ukraine-Russia problem
- I would image that US President Joe Biden may ask OPEC to produce more but he’s done that a few times in the past and I think it’s rather doubtful whether the cartel will loosen its supplies
- Russia is a major part of the OPEC+ group; so far it has said that it will increase their its combined production by about 400,000 barrels per day until it gets back to 2019 levels
And with no thawing of international relations currently in sight, it seems high oil & gas prices could be here to stay.
