LONDON: Oil prices could rise to $40 a barrel in New York by the end of this year, analysts said yesterday.
The chief economist at the Centre for Global Energy Studies Leo Drollas said prices could rise to $40 a barrel in New York and $35 in London by the end of this year – but only if the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) did not agree an output increase at its ministerial conference in Vienna on September 10.
He also stressed that such price rises would be occasional spikes, not average levels.
Moreover, Drollas predicted that Opec would agree to pump at least 500,000 extra barrels a day. The producers’ organisation has already increased production twice this year in an attempt to stabilise prices which have tripled since late in 1998.
The head of commodities risk management at the Royal Bank of Scotland, Andrew Hartree, said he “wouldn’t bet against” Brent prices rising to $35 a barrel over the next few months.
An analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, Peter Gignoux, said that “nothing would surprise him now”, and he added that the average price of Brent last year was $18.03 a barrel and that the average for this year so far was $27.25.
© Agence France Press
