Predicting the price of oil and when it will recover is a total waste of time except for those who like to give it a shot regardless of being wrong.
Not even Nostradamus, who had a pretty good record at foretelling future events in his day, would get it right today with so many pricing factors at play, but many keep trying.
Remember when Jeff Rubin, a former chief economist at CIBC guessed oil would go to over $200 a barrel after it hit a high of $147 in 2008? He was wrong as the price fell back.
He wrote a few books, too, about his predictions that were out of date before they hit the market.
Pick a number and you could be right. How about $100 a barrel by July 1? Let’s go with that as it will make everyone feel happy with summer underway.
Actually one of the best predictors is Pipeline News. Oddly, our monthly page count seems to roughly reflect the price of West Texas Intermediate oil.
We often had over 100 pages back in the day when oil was over $100 a barrel. This month we could be spot on again with our page count.
Don’t take this to the bank though. If predictions are all about hope, then go for $100 a barrel by November instead of July to extend those hopeful feelings a few more months.
If you like drama and fear, then select $22 a barrel by August at your own risk.
Predictions sell books and news stories, but daily reality is the only accurate guide. You can’t plan for something that may not occur or shows little sign of occurring.
Can you hire back 20 employees because an analyst forecasts $80 a barrel by October? Nope.
There are so many factors in oil pricing and most of them relate to Keynesian economics of supply and demand.
Right now, demand is weak while there is too much supply.
Summer driving in North America will help push up the demand for gasoline, but a big price swing in oil needs to see strong demand from countries like India and China.
Something also needs to happen to lower the supply level and that wild card could be a geopolitical one too.
Fear and greed tend to drive the stock markets with fear also bringing temporary oil price relief.
It seems that sooner than later more OPEC producing countries will be directly affected by the rising tide of terrorism in the Middle East that could be a game changer for oil demand and supply.
The U.S. coalition could also put troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria and that would ratchet up with fear factor in oil prices.
That’s my personal prediction given the ISIS incursion into the oilfields of Syria and the threat that imposes to the West.
Let’s hope those scenarios don’t play out which leaves meteorites, tidal waves and earthquakes as unlikely candidates to quickly stir up the oil price pot.
Basically, it comes down to supply and demand and the current oversupply is what everyone cites as the cause of the current downturn in pricing and oilfield activity.
The solution would be for industry to sustain supply at the same relative level of demand to prevent boom and busts that are job killers.
Sustainable development is likely a hard swallow especially for publicly-traded producers who tout production growth to investors on a quarterly basis.
Matching production to meet demand would be less costly than the current massive cuts to capital spending and jobs due to the oversupply of oil in the world.
Sustainability may be an idea whose time has come, but I’m not predicting that will ever happen. Tomorrow is another day though.
