Comments on: Contest: When will oil hit $100 a barrel?

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:59:45 +0000

505

By: hapa

hapa — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:48:04 +0000

my 88 days was based on tougher future treatment of big banks. with public funds continuing to flow into the gaping holes via toxic paper, there’s little need to play games in any other sandbox, you can buy from the distressed and resell to your special subsidized captive market.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ 2009/ 03/ has-gaming-of-public-private.html

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:04:09 +0000

212 days: August 1st, 2009

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:44:23 +0000

400! That's mid Q1 2010. Economy should recover by then hopefully. I do think we might see $80 oil briefly this year. Because of that, I personally went ahead and hedged my gas with petrofix.com. Don't think there is much more downside from here so it is worth a shot.

By: Glenn Hubbers

Glenn Hubbers — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:27:20 +0000

This is an interesting exercise as there are forces which would serve the keep the price low, others to send the price higher, and still others (ie OPEC) attempting to maintain stability within a range. Incidentally, I believe another group wishing for OPEC to successfully maintain that price range (or higher) are all the companies with Canadian Tar Sands projects.

Like a previous reader, I’m in the “we’ve already peaked” camp, so this would lead me to believe that $100 oil would be hit as soon as demand outstrips OPEC’s ability adjust production to keep it within the $70-$80 target range. On that basis, I’d say mid 2010.

On the other side of the coin though, I am also a pessimist on the economic recovery, particularly in the U.S., which I think will be deeper and wider than almost anyone is currently predicting. So this would lead me to add a year to mid 2011.

But with all the “stimulus” that appears to be the current trend, the U.S. dollar is sure to go down and likely steeply, perhaps even quicker than OPEC can react. This is, I think, the most important factor.

Therefore, I’ll take a day with personal significance,
March 29, 2010 = 452 days.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:00:25 +0000

The Saudis are opening a huge new field. They want the price at $80 (it covers their overhead, i.e. the cost of running the entire country, not the direct cost of production, which is less than $2/BBL). The previous spike had less to do with supply and demand than speculation, but I can’t predict whether another spec bubble will occur or not. $100 oil is seen as damaging to the economy, so OPEC will try to keep it lower than that. Demand is down and will continue that way for a long, long time, years, I think. I think demand will continue to drop for 2 years before starting to recover, possibly longer depending on the depth of the recession / depression. I’ll take 1825 days (5 years). Hint: If you want to use the normal distribution, this will be an ‘outlier”, but this doesn’t make my expert prognostication any less valid. Try using a different distribution. Weibull might be a candidate.

Sorry for double post, I used a “less than” symbol which it thought was an HTML tag…

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:57:27 +0000

The Saudis are opening a huge new field. They want the price at $80 (it covers their overhead, i.e. the cost of running the entire country, not the direct cost of production, which is

By: Koen

Koen — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:22:31 +0000

300 days. Not that I think that demand will rise, but rather that the dollar will fall (and many other things with it).

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:39:23 +0000

244

The WSJ used to run a series on using a dartboard vs the top experts at picking stock winners. The darts won almost every time. I used a javascript random() function to get 244. I’m not being flip…just using the time-tested method with complex systems.

The narrowness of demand to potential supply has become so tight that oil prices have become super-sensitive. Anything that threatens 2% increase in demand or 2% unexpected decrease in potential supply will send prices rocketing. Nobody knows what combo of political strife, depletion gotchas and demand growth will do the $100 first.

I don’t think OPEC voluntary cuts will do it because they can turn the spigots on again to adjust price. They are just as afraid of $100+ as we are. It’s *potential* supply shortfalls that will send the price to “11″.

By: Maarten Willemsen

Maarten Willemsen — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:32:01 +0000

1000 days, because the recession goes longer, and some countries start to cautiously tax CO2-emissions, reducing demand.
Taxing oil and natural gas (and coal anyway) would be a great way to transfer resource rents from producing countries (”them!”) to consuming countries (”us!”).