There's an interesting Bloomberg story on the oil outlook for 2007. One Lehman Brothers analyst predicts the per-barrel price to rise to $72 next year. Another analyst, T. Rowe Price Group's Tim Parker, tells Bloomberg that he thinks oil prices will stay around today's level for about a year, thanks to more output from non-OPEC countries, and then begin to rise. By the end of next year, he says, $60 crude will "feel more like a floor than a ceiling [...] It'll be difficult for non-OPEC supply to consistently meet demand growth."
And, of course, no oil-price-prediction story is complete without Boone Pickens, the oil billionaire and hedge fund manager (who has apparently signed on to support Rudy Giuliani's '08 bid). He thinks the price of oil has bottomed out: "I keep thinking we're right at the bottom on oil [...] I don't see why the run is over if the global economy continues to grow."
Though some argue that Pickens is pumping up his own investments, he's been correct about prices before, and his statements alone can't account for the price increases we've seen over the last three years.
It seems like years ago that legislators in Washington were tripping over themselves trying to quell public dissatisfaction with high prices at the pump. And even after gasoline prices fell and stabilized, the national conversation about energy continued, with debates on drilling in Congress, and a proposition in California on renewables. It'll be interesting to watch the debate heat up again when (or if) gasoline prices rise in 2007.
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