In the supply-led price crisis that started last year, the industry is looking for the turning point at which output growth will start to shrink. But the price decline and timeline needed to cause that shrinkage is “difficult to gauge”, the EIA says. The oil industry has poor form in predicting sudden shifts in the market. No leading forecasters predicted the sudden halving of oil prices last year. And the industry has missed most key turning points in the balance between supply and demand - the start of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the surge in Chinese diesel demand in 2004 and the collapse in global demand in 2008-09.
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