Oil Prices: fundamentals or speculation?

In this presentation, Christopher Allsopp and Bassam Fattouh discuss the recent rise in oil prices to around $135 per barrel, arguing that the diminution of feedbacks has destabilised long term expectations of oil prices. This has resulted in an unlocking of the back end of the futures curve, leading to ‘indeterminacy’ and great uncertainty about ‘fundamentals’ – a situation which can lead to volatility and drifts in the oil price responding to quite small changes in ‘news’ about supply, demand or OPEC behaviour.

By: Christopher Allsopp , Bassam Fattouh