Only slowing demand can rein in oil prices

LONDON - Only an unlikely, significant drop in oil demand can achieve what Opec has failed to do - steer near-record prices back to the US$50 ($79) a barrel level that consumers and producers say they can live with.

Opec ministers meeting in Caracas promised on Thursday to keep pumping as much oil as their customers want, but on Friday prices remained stubbornly above $70 a barrel and in striking distance of April's US$75.35 all-time high.

With global economic growth resilient - the International Monetary Fund has forecast 4.9 per cent average growth this year - there is no sign of the sort of collapse in demand that followed the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s.

"Global growth is still looking robust," said Richard Batty, global investment strategist at Standard Life Investments, which manages worldwide assets of £118.8 billion.

"Economic recovery is coming through in Europe and Japan. We have synchronised growth globally and need a lot of that to come off the boil. It is keeping prices underpinned."

The days when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could dictate the direction of the oil price with a pen stroke are gone. So are the days when the group, supplier of a third of the world's oil, could genuinely be called a cartel.

The situation on the oil market today is very different from the 1970s and 1980s. The oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s happened for a simple reason: there were sudden cuts in supply as a result of the Arab oil embargo and the Iranian revolution.

Supply worries are certainly an element in today's high oil prices. Turmoil in Iraq and fears that a dispute over Iran's atomic programme could halt supplies from the world's fourth biggest exporter have added an estimated US$10-15 to the price.

But strong demand from the world's two biggest oil consumers, the United States and China, and an influx of pension and hedge fund money have also been significant factors.

In 2004 Opec began raising its output ceiling towards the present 28 million barrels per day, close to the group's limit. Over the same period, oil prices have doubled. Since the start of 2002 the cost of a barrel of oil has soared by US$50.

"Opec is very much a hostage to demand," said Leo Drollas, deputy executive director at the Centre for Global Energy Studies. "The only thing that will change the situation is much slower growth and demand for oil being cut back."

Analysts have begun trimming their forecasts for oil demand growth because of sustained high prices, but the revisions are tiny set against the 85 million barrels per day oil market.

According to a Reuters survey published on Friday, analysts have trimmed their average forecast for 2006 oil demand growth by a modest 240,000 barrels per day to 1.3 million. They are predicting growth will quicken to 1.42 million bpd next year.

"Recession is a highly unlikely scenario," said Deborah White, oil analyst at SG CIB in Paris.

"The extremely robust global economy and healthy-to-inflated prices for commodities both result from central banks' extremely accommodative monetary policies."

Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi predicted in a newspaper interview on Friday that accelerating inflation and rising interest rates would eventually hurt demand for oil.

"Interest rates are rising and inflation is increasing. Attempts to control it (inflation) today should raise interest rates. If interest rates rise, liquidity will decrease which will affect demand for fuel," he said.

"If this happens in the next 6 months or the next 12 months, it will affect demand."

But will this be enough to push oil down to US$50 and below?

"There would certainly need to be a rather unlikely run of unexpectedly weak macro-economic and oil demand data," said Paul Horsnell, an analyst at Barclays Capital. "And in a perfect world an absence of hurricanes and geopolitics might help."

- REUTERS