Oil & Gas Price: Crystal B(oil) Gazing…

On the plane to Aberdeen on Sunday night I found myself in the unfortunate situation of finishing my book with 20 minutes left before we landed. Reluctantly I reached into the seat pocket in front and extracted the in-flight magazine; idly flicking through I happened upon my horoscope for the coming week (I’m a Pisces, by the way). One of the vaguest and confusing lines of this was as follows…

‘You can’t find the answers you seek, and you realize that no one else will, either.’

This got me thinking (it certainly didn’t encourage me to read on any further) about predicting the future. What a handy skill that would be!

Take the barrel price for instance…

I, along with many thousands of others, have spent the recent past trying very hard to draw some form of conclusion about where the oil price will end up, be it in the next year, the next month or even the next week.

I’m sure most people, like myself, look to respected industry sources for such information, Rigzone, Upstream etc… but sadly these haven’t helped much.

We seem to be enjoying a relatively stable price at the moment (in the late 70s) and it would seem that we are beginning to leave the bad news behind us and look ahead into a more stable period for the industry. However, some are still predicting huge reductions in global demand and the possibility of another tumble in prices. (Of course others are saying we might see triple figures again soon.)

Does anyone else find this more than a little frustrating?

Now, I am going to stick by the words of an ancient Chinese Philosopher, Lao Tzu (what do you mean you haven’t heard of him!) and avoid adding my two cents into the discussion. The very wise Lao said, "Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge."

So while I can’t offer any help on predicting the future or even offering predictions about the oil price I have draw my own conclusion about trying…

Reading the predictions on oil price in the news is much like reading my horoscope… if I look hard enough I can pretty much make it mean whatever I want!

by Jen Draper

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