This Monday, the attention will return to the meeting between the oil-producing countries. The OPEC meeting comes with a barrel of Brent over $ 79 due to the rise in energy prices in Europe and the global tension in gas prices.
The benchmark oil in Europe thus stands at levels not seen in three years in a period that also coincides with the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, which has also paralyzed oil and gas exports due to damage to extractive platforms and in the pipelines.
Investment banking has already warned that this winter there will be a strong increase in demand and that the industry is not investing enough to maintain supply. Goldman Sachs experts put Brent at $ 90 a barrel this year and warn of a possible slowdown in the recovery.
From Bank of America they believe that a cold winter could take it up to $ 100 and believe that as it happened in the seventies or in 2008 – when the Brent touched the 145 dollars just before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers -, the price of the oil becomes the destabilizing factor causing the next macro crisis. “We may be in a storm of the next macro-hurricane,” says the analysis firm, which affects several reasons: the substitution of gas for oil if gas prices continue to rise, a winter of cold temperatures and the increase in air traffic with the reopening of the United States. “If all these factors come together, oil prices could skyrocket and cause a second round of inflationary pressures around the world,” the report adds.
And it is that the rebound in the price of oil, as well as the rest of fuels, is having a direct effect on the rise in prices, both in the United States and in Europe, which could end up forcing central banks to advance the withdrawal of stimuli and the rise in interest rates, and slowing down the economic recovery.
The rise in oil prices has also led some experts to question whether OPEC should increase its production. In August, the cartel members increased their production to 400,000 barrels of crude per month. Increase that, they justified, should serve to relieve pressure on the price of oil.
– .
