Countdown to 100$ oil (19) - Your bets for 2006

by Jerome a Paris

Community

(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2005 Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2005 at 3:38:49pm PST

Well, barring a major geopolitical event in the next two days, it looks like my bet on 100$/bl oil by the end of this year will be conclusively lost. I will announce the winner of the price forecast contest (from both the DailyKos thread and the Eurotrib thread) from last August this weekend or early next week, but, undaunted, I'd like to take bets on 2006.

This time, I have four questions. Each will have, like this year, a prize consisting of a bottle of, at your choice, French champagne or whiskey.

I'll kindly ask that you recommend this diary so that as many people as possible can take the bet.

Oil is currently around 56-57$/bl (the above graph is for Brent, from oilnergy.com), and briefly touched 70$/bl right after Katrina hit. So, pretty impressive prices, but not quite 100$/bl yet. Natural gas prices got closer, with prices briefly going over 90$/boe (barrel of oil equivalent - use the price per mbtu and multiply by 5.9) in early December, but that's not what we bet on...

With hindsight, the natural gas story has been even more dramatic than the oil one, with still a fairly high probability of shortages this winter in both the USA and the UK, following the faster than expected decline of domestic production and the extensive damage to Gulf of Mexico infrastructure by Katrina and Rita. This year is the year that the bright future of gas-fired power plants met an untimely death, which begs the question of what will replace it - wind (but to what extent?), coal (but whither emissions and global warming?), nuclear (but what do we do with the waste?).

But the lessons on the oil front are not very encouraging.

first, the trend, taken over a long period, looks pretty bad:
second, the price increases, unlike in previous years, have been caused by demand growth, and not by (mostly artificial) supply shortages. Supply is now barely coping to follow demand, and spare capacity remains extremely low, thus putting the markets in danger from any crisis or unexpected event (terrorist attack, strike, accident in a critical facility, weather event, etc...). OPEC is enjoying its relative powerlessness to bring prices down, and is not investing to add capacity, and neither are, it seems, many other countries. Oil majors are being squeezed increasingly by host countries, and are having a difficult time replacing their reserves;
third, the price increases this year have not prevented demand from still growing. This confirms the expectations that oil demand is very much price-inelastic (i.e. it varies little with price), and thus that much bigger price increases will be needed if we end up needing actual demand destruction. 2005 has seen very mild demand growth from China after the records in 2004
but this is unlikely to last with the continuing strong growth of that country and the increasing numbers of Chinese people able to afford a car.

Having thus established by bearish credentials, and living true to the cartoon above, here are my questions:

What will be the highest price for oil in 2006? (As usual, you may choose your benchmark. If not provided, WTI will be the default option). And as an additional twist to that question (to be used to determine the winner if needed), what will be the proximate cause of that high?
What will be the year-end price for oil in late December 2006?
Same questions for natural gas: year high, and end-year prices, in $/mbtu, using Henry Hub (prices in $/boe will be accepted as well)
On what date will 100$/bl oil be reached? And same addendum - what will be the proximate cause?

You can also take the (anonymous) poll on that last one.

My own bet:

Highest: 240$/bl, after a US bombing raid on Iranian nuclear facilities, in October
Year-end 90$/bl
Natgas highest: 25$/mbtu after a cold spell in March. Year-end: 17$/mbtu
100$/bl oil reached in October

Your turn.