- Posted on September 29, 2021
- News
- By FC Team
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International benchmark Brent crude passed the long-anticipated threshold of $80 per barrel on Tuesday, though it’s since slipped back down to trade at $78.47 as of Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. in London. West Texas Intermediate was trading at $74.73 per barrel around the same time. With winter ahead and a gas crunch in Europe, the demand picture appears promising. But demand destruction could be right around the corner as prices climb higher, some experts are warning. “Oil prices have disconnected from the marginal cost of supply. Instead, they are travelling to the level where demand destruction kicks in, which we estimate at ~$80/bbl.” That’s what Morgan Stanley wrote in June, and in a note Tuesday, the bank wrote: “This remains our thesis.” It added, however, that “the price at which demand destruction kicks in can be fiendishly difficult to estimate. We leave our price forecast unchanged for now but recognise that, on current trends, upside to our bull case scenario to $85/bbl clearly exists.” Morgan Stanley foresees global oil supply getting tighter, citing an average of 3 million barrels of crude per day of inventory draws in the last month, compared to 1.9 million barrels per day drawn in the preceding months of this year. “These draws are high and suggest the market is more undersupplied than generally perceived,” the bank’s analysts Martijn Rats and Amy Sergeant said. .cnbc.com