Oil Price Forecast - March 17

[dan_s]

Comments below are from Keith Kohl

In a completely unshocking bit of news (to us, at least), the EIA has increased its West Texas Intermediate (WTI) spot price forecasts for both 2025 and 2026 in its latest short-term energy outlook.

The EIA now anticipates the WTI spot price to average $70.68 per barrel in 2025 and $64.97 per barrel in 2026. This marks an upward revision from their February STEO, which had forecast averages of $70.62 per barrel for 2025 and $62.46 per barrel for 2026. Along with this revision, the EIA also provided quarterly projections, detailing the WTI spot price to range from $62.50 to $71.50 per barrel throughout 2025 and 2026.

Other institutions, however, seem to have different outlooks.

Macquarie projects lower averages, estimating $64.75 per barrel in 2025 and $58.38 per barrel in 2026. In contrast, Standard Chartered Bank expects significantly higher prices, with the NYMEX WTI basis nearby future crude oil price averaging $82 per barrel in 2025 and $80 per barrel in the second quarter of 2026, forecasting an overall average of $82 per barrel for 2026.

Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan predicts an average WTI Crude price of $69 per barrel overall in 2025 and $57 per barrel overall in 2026. BMI, a unit of Fitch Solutions, forecasts the front-month WTI Crude price to average $73.00 per barrel in 2025 and $72.00 per barrel in 2026.

[dan_s]

My take is that oil demand will increase in Q2 2025 and WTI will firm up over $70.00/bbl.

I will be lowering the oil price used in my forecasts and increasing the natural gas price. Actual realized oil and gas prices will balance out in Q1 2025, so I expect financial results to be close to my Sweet 16 forecasts.