U.S. shale production will likely plateau if WTI oil prices remain in the low $60s per barrel, and decline at prices in the $50s, ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO Ryan Lance said at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday.
Wall Street banks are racing this week to slash their oil price forecasts for 2025 and 2026 after OPEC+ threw another curveball at the market this weekend by vowing to continue raising production by more than initially planned.
Commodity strategists and analysts from major U.S. and European investment banks have issued notes with downgraded oil price forecasts for 2025 and 2026 since OPEC+ producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed on Saturday to raise collective output by 411,000 barrels per day (bpd), nearly triple the volume originally scheduled.
Russia is considering changing its key budget-building mechanism in response to sliding oil revenue, in a sign the Kremlin expects crude prices will remain lower for longer while the war in Ukraine continues to drain state coffers.
Big Oil majors have no plans to scale back their budgets despite oil prices softening and more barrels poised to hit the market. That may sound reckless in a bearish environment, but it’s anything but. With demand picking up in Asia and OPEC+ preparing to unwind production cuts faster than expected, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and TotalEnergies are digging in—ready to pump more, not less.
The price of crude oil is expected to average $64 per barrel in 2025, the World Bank has revealed in its April 2025 Commodity Markets Outlook.
This is compared with $80.7 per barrel in 2024.
The Bretton Woods institution is forecasting a further drop in the price of crude oil to an average of $60 in 2025.
The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States slipped this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, following a 2 rig increase in each of the two weeks prior.
At the end of April, crude oil prices settled at the lowest in four years. The immediate reason was a report that Saudi Arabia was fed up with production cuts and was willing to give cheaper oil for a longer go. The other reason: Trump’s tariffs. Ironically, the tariff fear pressuring prices is related to economic growth prospects. Yet cheap oil is a great fuel for economic growth—which is why oil importers are happy. Exporters, not so much.
“The sharp drop in the PMIs likely overstates the impact of tariffs due to negative sentiment effects, but it still suggests that China’s economy is coming under pressure as external demand cools,” Capital Economics analyst Zichun Huang told Reuters. “Although the government is stepping up fiscal support, this is unlikely to fully offset the drag, and we expect the economy to expand just 3.5% this year,” she added.
The Trump administration appears not to be in a rush to close any trade deals with those eager for them. Reuters reported that no deals at all were signed during last week’s IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings, which saw world leaders gather in one place to discuss trade. This suggests extended tariff uncertainty, which means extended oil price uncertainty.
Oil prices may decline further this year as new production swells and demand remains capped by China’s faltering growth, the head of the International Energy Agency said.
While crude futures have recovered over the past two weeks to trade near $68 a barrel on London, they remain roughly 9% below levels traded before President Donald Trump announced a blizzard of tariffs on China and other nations on April 2.