美国能源信息署(EIA)署长预测：未来18个月油价跌破$100

美国能源信息署(EIA)署长Guy Caruso预测：未来18个月油价跌破$100/B

美国能源信息署(EIA)署长Guy Caruso日前表示，由于全球需求降低以及石油产量提高，未来18个月原油价格可能跌破每桶100美元。

Caruso在华盛顿召开的普氏能源资讯能源讲坛(Platts Energy Podium)提出了上述看法。他表示：“我认为随着全球需求的降低，以及美国、巴西、加拿大以及欧佩克成员国石油产量的增加，油价有可能跌破每桶100美元。”

Caruso说，如果全球剩余产能继续从当前的每天150万桶提高至每天300万桶到400万桶，而全球石油需求疲软，那么对石油价格下跌情况的猜测就更接近于实际情况。

Caruso将于9月份离开美国能源信息署。他说：“如今这一情况比过去5年内任何时候都更有可能出现。”Caruso还指出，随着OPEC就是否削减产量进行讨论，油价的下跌也使“OPEC产生内部冲突成为可能”。

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EIA chief: Oil could fall below $100
Asia Pulse - 27/08/2008

http://www.menafn.com/qn_print.asp?StoryID=1093209708&subl=true

(MENAFN - Asia Pulse) Crude oil prices "could" fall below $100 per barrel over the next 18 months on slowing worldwide demand and an increase in oil production, Energy Information Administration (EIA) chief Guy Caruso said Tuesday.

Caruso made the comment to reporters at the Platts Energy Podium in Washington.

I think [prices] could fall below $100 a barrel on slowing global demand and rising production in the US, Brazil and Canada, and from OPEC states such as Saudi Arabia and Angola," Caruso said.

While Caruso said "most of the risk is on the upside," and that it was not the official EIA prediction, he added that a scenario of falling oil prices is "now closer to 50-50" if worldwide spare production capacity continues to increase from the current 1.5 million barrels per day (b/d) to 3-4 million b d while global oil demand softens.

"That scenario is now more realistic than any time in the past five years," said Caruso, who will leave EIA in September.

A decline in oil prices also "opens up the possibility of conflict in OPEC" as the producers' group debates whether to trim output, Caruso said.

EIA earlier this month said it expected oil to remain at $120 to $130/b in 2008. Crude oil prices reached a record $147.27/b on July 11. Prices have fallen more than 20% since then on waning demand.

Caruso also reiterated that releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or the home heating oil reserve, would have little effect on prices. "I think it would be more valuable to save it for real emergencies," he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive presidential nominee, have urged releasing about 70 million barrels of crude oil from the nation's emergency reserve, about 10% of the US supply, to cut gasoline prices.

Caruso said that even if oil prices continued to fall, it would be unlikely that many policies, such as the Renewable Fuels Standard, which requires the use of 9 billion gallons of biofuels in the US in 2008, might be rolled back or reduced.

There's no going back," he said. "We're near a tipping point here."

Caruso said that the debate in Congress over more drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and the Gulf of Mexico as well as reining in oil speculators also had little to do with the decline in crude oil prices. Increasing oil "by small increments over long periods of time doesn't have a lot of impact on price."