Davos view on oil: 'A lot lower for a lot longer'

The first mantra of the oil crisis was ‘lower for longer’. Then “lower for even longer”. Now in Davos, oil executives are starting to talk - or rather, whisper - about a new nightmare scenario: “A lot lower for a lot longer.”

Oil executives, policy makers and banks said in the first days of the World Economic Forum that a recovery will remain elusive in 2016 as major producers keep pumping and China’s fuel appetite slackens. And they fret that prices could take another hit as Iranian crude freed from sanctions flows back on to world markets.

“It is the third year in a row we have more supply than demand,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), told Francine Lacqua in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Prices will be still under pressure. I don’t see any reason why we have a surprise increase in the price in 2016.” Read Articles