Oil’s dire performance since the start of the year continued yesterday as prices of benchmark Brent crude and US West Texas Intermediate flirted with $30 a barrel. Concerns about China’s economy, whose growth led a surge in demand in the past decade, together with still robust US production and a jump in output from Opec, has taken prices to levels last seen more than 10 years ago. But where do they go next?
Bear Case: Ed Morse, global head of commodities research, Citigroup
It would take an unusual series of supply disruptions to change this course of price behaviour. In the short-run the market outlook for oil is fairly bleak. After a year in which inventories probably grew at 1.4m barrels a day, stockpiles continue to grow as demand remains sluggish against the backdrop of a global economy growing more slowly than anticipated amid flattening demand from China for petroleum products.