Predicting oil prices

Bulging stocks, US output gains and Opec's need to make further production cuts are derailing a recovery in oil prices, according to AOGC 2017’s conference chairman

Rising inventories suggest oil prices could well head down before any recovery, though the crude market is likely to reach balance earlier than its gas counterpart, according to Fereidun Fesharaki, AOGC 2017 conference chairman. "What impacts the price is not actually supply-demand fundamentals. The paper players—the speculators in the market—they only watch one thing: inventories," he told delegates. With a luminous crystal ball at his side to inform his future-gazing, Fesharaki, chairman of consultancy FGE, said that while players across the oil industry had done a remarkable job in ensuring compliance with production cuts demanded by Opec, oil inventories were stubbornly refusing to go do