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SINGAPORE - Goldman Sachs, among the biggest oil price bulls in a Reuters poll, has cut its 2007 US crude price forecast by US$3.50 to US$69 ($101.69) a barrel due to unusually warm winter weather in the United States, its second reduction in just over two weeks.
"Although some of this warm weather was already embedded in our price forecasts, the weather deviation since mid-December ...through first part of January will likely reduce oil demand by a further 46 million barrels relative to our prior assumption of normal weather, which would be worth approximately US$3.70 a barrel to the oil price," it said in a report dated January 5.
Goldman, which held the most bullish 2007 forecast in Reuters poll of over 30 analysts in the first part of last year, had already cut its forecast for this year by US$3 on December 22, citing unexpectedly high US oil inventories.
- REUTERS
