Sabine Hills, said they expect crude oil prices because of Libya's output gap and an increase of $ 20 / barrel, if the return about a year ago during the Libyan war. Iran's export scale is about twice that of Libya, if Iran's oil production is interrupted because of geopolitical factors, they expect oil prices rose $ 40 / barrel.
Since early October last year, Brent crude oil prices have risen by about 27 percent of New York crude oil futures contracts rose more than 33 percent in April, despite the global oil demand actually shrunk in the fourth quarter of 2011, 300,000 barrels / day decline for the first time since the 2009 crisis.
The recent past, Europe and the United States in succession to a variety of economic sanctions against Iran, Iran's oil exports have been significantly reduced. Coupled with the situation in Syria, Yemen and other countries of the Middle East turmoil, geopolitical factors continue to provide upward momentum to the price of oil.
Hills explains, can be learned from the past on several occasions in oil prices, the global economy can not be good to absorb the impact of high oil prices. According to their prediction, whenever oil or energy expenditure, gross domestic product (GDP) of 9%, then there will be a substantial contraction in the economy, spending on oil accounted for 8.3%, so the agency that sustainable oil the price ceiling of $ 135 / barrel.
Hills is expected that, if Iran decided to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, the price of oil rose to a record high of about 20 percent of global oil transportation through the straits. This may result in oil prices rose, easily will surpass 200 U.S. dollars / barrel.
Hills believes that the past few months, oil prices rose mainly due to further relaxation of monetary policy and stimulus measures World Pipe network informed. Brent crude oil prices past $ 20 or $ 5 attributed to IranWorld Steel Pipe , the remaining $ 15 is attributed to the mobility and continuing the quantitative easing policy. The money supply continued to increase, leading to further decline compared to the monetary value of real assets. Liquidity has a huge impact on oil prices.
Sabine Hills, senior director and global commodity strategist of Merrill Lynch Global Research, said that the interference of Iran in terms of oil supply may be the highest oil prices push up the $ 40 / barrel.