Baku, Azerbaijan, July 29
By Aygun Badalova - Trend:
With the oil market entering a new normal level of lower prices, the World Bank projects the price per barrel to settle in the range of $53 to $60 by 2020, when supply and demand are expected to be in balance.
The World Bank’s latest MENA Quarterly Economic Brief, “Whither Oil Prices?” report said that the world oil market will work through its current oversupply and rebalance in early 2020 at market-clearing prices.
“Oil prices are not expected to revert to the triple digits observed during 2011-13 any time soon because of fundamental changes in the behavior of market players,” Lili Mottaghi, World Bank MENA Economist and the lead author of the report said.
“Without a sustained pickup in demand, the market will remain over-supplied and low oil prices are likely to persist at least through 2020,” she said.
Oil prices on Friday remained around April lows as slowing economic growth threatened to worsen ongoing oversupply of crude and refined products, Reuters reported.
International Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 were trading at $42.78 at 0127 GMT (09:27 p.m. EDT), up 8 cents from their previous close. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 was at $41.16, up 2 cents.
Brent hit its lowest since April in the previous session, at $42.56, while WTI hit a fresh low of $40.95 per barrel early on Friday, and both crude benchmarks are now down around 20 percent since their last peak in June.