Will we see oil at $100 a barrel again?

Electric cars charging — Electric cars will only comprise 8% of passenger vehicles by 2030

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Brent crude has gained 23% to around $64 a barrel this year. Its gains have already surpassed the most bullish of forecasts, says Avi Salzman for Barron’s. Bank of America thinks crude will hit $100 a barrel “from time to time” over the next five years. Before 2014 crude regularly traded above $100. That era ended when US shale drillers began to pour millions of new barrels onto global markets.

There are two key factors currently capping oil below $100 a barrel. First, energy cartel Opec and ally Russia are currently withholding about seven million barrels per day (mbpd) of production to prop up prices; economic recovery this year will cause them to turn on the taps and flood the market. Second, the green-energy transition means that some analysts think the world may already have passed peak oil demand. The energy transition is “real” and welcome, but things are moving “glacially”, says Dylan Grice on themarket.ch. Bloomberg projects that electric vehicles “will only make up around 8% of the total fleet of passenger cars by 2030... The oil market will continue to play a central role” for decades.

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As demand picks up over the next five years, that could send prices going as high as $150 a barrel. Above $100, oil becomes pricier than already existing green alternatives, delivering the coup de grâce to oil and sending producers spiralling. Paradoxically, the “greatest threat to Saudi Arabia and Russia over the next five years is a roaring bull market for crude oil”.

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Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019.

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere.

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful.

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.