Optimistic Citi predicts oil at $60 per barrel in 2021

[jace lau + 2]

The price of Brent crude is forecast to reach $60 per barrel by analysts at Citi, the big US bank, as global economic demand recovers and high stock levels are used up. ... with the future structure of the industry we are not anticipating further price wars. “But at $55-$60 that could be the case. More：https://www.investreader.com/sections/energy

So. what do you think?

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

I think as soon as WTI gets to $60 everyone who knows how to spell shell oil is going to put a bit into the ground. And the rig count will jump from 280 to 600. And we will be back to 12 million bod within six months. And the price will dip to $55. And that will go on for a while. 

Then some day most of that shale will be gone and that's when some very profitable shallow conventional wells will be drilled, all over Alberta, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas. 

And oil will go back and forth $55-$70 for some time. And then one day we'll wake up to a natural calamity (meteor shower, volcanic eruption, earthquake?) or a manmade one (some moron hit the nuclear button, or blew up a container ship crosswise in the Strait of Hormuz, or sent a ballistic missile into the KSA gathering and desulfuring system, or there is an EMS in the outer stratosphere) and oil will be $150 and rising. Or, alternatively, there is a famine in Venezuela, Argentina, Libya, Nigeria, Liberia, Iraq . . . name your oil-producing country . . . and oil goes to $200+ based on fears of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse marching along the lands. 

And that is my best case scenario. Seriously. 

Oil and gas have served as reliable low-cost energy sources in the world for 100 years. They have powered the world through several wars. They have catalyzed the manufacture of drugs, medical devices, computers, automobiles and trucks and airplanes. Through our own cunning we have "invented" and alternative, computer-dependent world that is particularly vulnerable to a myriad of evil and accidental disruptions. At the other end of that, there will be blood, er, oil.