Strong global economic growth and Saudi Arabia bringing a risk premium to oil prices could send Brent crude oil prices surging to $80 next year, more than 20 percent compared to current prices, according to economist Jim O’Neill, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Analysts are already turning bullish on crude oil prices with several of them revising their earlier forecasts upwards.

Oil prices are likely to continue climbing in 2018 on the back of OPEC-led production cuts and a growing global economy, industry executives and analysts say. But any gains are expected to be kept in check by booming supplies from the U.S. By 2025, the average price of a barrel of Brent crude oil will rise to $85.70/b (in 2017 dollars, which removes the effect of inflation).

6 major reasons why Brent crude oil prices will rise:
• Stronger economic fundamentals.

• synchronizing global economic growth and continued geopolitical tensions;

• a significant increase has been seen in crude oil demand due to extremely cold weather in North America, which will keep prices of Brent crude oil higher.

• the OPEC is very likely to cut short the OPEC-NOPEC deal by mid-2018 if markets are balanced as their target five-year OECD inventories average currently stands at just 79 million barrels in surplus.

• Apart from this, Natixis adds that the speculative positions in Brent are at a new record high on CFTC.

Source: http://www.stockmaster.in/crude_oil.html