Crude oil may rebound to $57 next year, analysts say

Progress will be slow. The crude glut will take a long time to dissipate, meaning only gradual price gains, said Michael Hsueh, a strategist at Deutsche Bank AG. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, will average $49.50 in the fourth quarter before breaking decisively above $50 next year, the analysts say.

 “We’re looking at a market that’s still in a very slow process of rebalancing and we don’t think that you’ll get a sustainable deficit until the second quarter of 2017,” said Hsueh, who sees oil at $53 next year. “Those deficits are necessary to draw down global inventories, but that will still take until the end of 2018, it appears.”

WTI fell 22 percent from early June to Monday’s close, taking it past the 20 percent drop that characterizes a bear market. So ends a recovery that saw prices almost double from a 12-year low in February. The grade traded at $40.53 at 3:35 p.m. in London, having dipped below $40 earlier in the day. Supply disruptions from Nigeria to Canada that cut into the global surplus have abated.

While U.S. stockpiles are down from an April peak, they remain far above anything the market has witnessed at this time of year for at least three decades. Worse, gasoline inventories are at unprecedented levels, too, crushing processing profits from a fuel that a few months ago was seen as an industry bright spot.

“The price move down does make sense, given that we still have a huge overhang of oil inventories,” said Gareth Lewis Davies, an energy strategist at BNP Paribas. “There’s a sense that looking at the balances going forward, supply and demand are in parity. That means we’re still left with this overhang.”

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