BMI View: In our December oil price outlook we highlighted two factors that dominated the oil market during the course of 2011. Firstly, repeated production outages in the North Sea, West Africa and elsewhere coupled with the Libyan civil war, resulted in seri- ous supply tightness. Secondly, demand remained resilient despite a deteriorating macroeconomic environment. We expect these factors to continue driving the market during 2012, though we do expect supply tightness to ease gradually over the course of the year. As a result, barring any signifcant supply disruptions, we expect key price benchmarks to correct to the downside from their 2011 aver- ages. BMI has therefore maintained its forecast at US$102/bbl for Brent and US$93.50/bbl for WTI.
展开▼
