Richard Savage, head of energy research of Swiss banking firm Mirabaud & Cie has said that oil prices should rise to US$75 a barrel and that the peak prices of 2008, where a barrel of oil went as high as $147 a barrel, will not be returning for the foreseeable future.
“The market is once again being driven by fundamentals, and with inventories at near record levels and OPEC sitting on 5 million barrels of spare capacity,” he said at Investment Opportunities in Asia and Beyond, a private seminar held in Muscat, Oman.
“We do not expect a recovery anytime soon. In addition, once the price does rally, we do not see a return to a $100+ per barrel world. We believe a US$75 per barrel oil price is high enough to incentivise all but the most expensive producers; it is high enough to encourage investment in alternative energy sources; and it is high enough to put a break on the explosive demand growth that was the catalyst for the last oil price rally.”
The seminar was hosted by Robert Lloyd George, founder and chairman of Asian market specialists Lloyd George Management. “We are at an important stage in the current financial cycle,” he said “In early 2009, the Far East and Asia poses a significant opportunity for investors, so this seminar presents the market outlook from the perspective of different asset classes before opening the forum for discussion.”
The keynote speaker at the seminar was Dr. Marc Faber, editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report.
