OIL prices could tumble as low as $20 a barrel next year, it was forecast yesterday — raising the prospect of 90p a litre petrol.
GOLDMAN SACHS believes oil could slump to its lowest level since 2002.
The investment bank rated the chances of it hitting $20 in 2016 as 15 per cent — a scenario that would have been unthinkable only a year ago, when oil was $100 a barrel.
Goldman research leader Michele Della Vigna said yesterday: “We think $20 is a possibility — although an unlikely one at this point in time.”
He said triggering factors would be if “a very warm winter led to excessive build-up of diesel inventories”, and lack of oil storage space.
He added: “It would be a shock to the system, a temporary one. We cannot find an equilibrium here at $20 a barrel.”
If the cost did fall that low “the benefit of lower oil prices will certainly come through to the consumer”, he said.
US crude was $42.57 a barrel yesterday and Brent Crude $45.65.
Howard Cox, of the FairFuelUK Campaign, believes $20 a barrel would mean 90p at the pumps but it should be lower.
In 2002, when oil was last that cheap, petrol cost 79p a litre and diesel 75p, but fuel duty has risen by around 10p since then.
Mr Cox said: “Opportunistic profiteering is now rampant in the supply chain with pricing at retail outlets an opaque secretive process manipulated by colluding businesses to keep prices high.”
For most of 2015, Texas oil fields have led the pullback in rigs. But on Friday, Baker Hughes data showed that Texas gained three rigs in the last week, with losses coming in three other states. Wyoming and Colorado each shut down three rigs, and Oklahoma shut down four.
Texas’ biggest oil and gas field, the Permian Basin in West Texas, idled five rigs last week, but gains elsewhere made up for that loss statewide. The oil rig count for the Permian stood at 219 Friday, Baker Hughes said.
U.S. solar company SunEdison Inc said it would sell projects in India with generating capacity of 425 megawatts (MW) to its "yieldco" TerraForm Global Inc for $231 million.
Heavily indebted SunEdison said earlier this month that it would stop selling projects to its two yieldcos - dividend-paying units that hold generating assets of a parent solar or wind power company - until market conditions improved.
"We'll go through evaluation of good opportunities and wherever it makes sense we'll continue to transact with the cash available in our yieldcos already," Pashupathy Gopalan, SunEdison Asia Pacific's president, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Shares of the company, which also said a unit had repaid almost all money related to a margin loan with Deutsche Bank, rose as much as 16.3 percent.
"We believe a significant portion of the recent volatility around the company and its subsidiaries has been attributed to the margin loan," SunEdison Chief Executive Ahmad Chatila said in a statement.
Up to Monday's close, SunEdison's shares had lost nearly 69 percent of their value since Oct. 7 when the company said it would stop sales of renewable energy assets to its "yieldcos" and sell more projects to third parties. Sales to third-parties generally mean higher prices for the assets.
SunEdison, which grew quickly through acquisitions, has been plagued by liquidity concerns, and the company reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss earlier this month.
TerraForm Global, whose shares fell as much as 7.5 percent to $5.02 on Tuesday, has canceled plans to buy other assets to buy SunEdison's projects, SunEdision said.
SunEdison operates Indian solar plants with capacity of about 450 MW. It has another 800 MW of capacity under development and recently won a tender for a 500 MW plant in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
"We continue to expand in India ... It will become a country of even more importance for us," Gopalan told reporters earlier on Tuesday.
India is targeting 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022, or about 33 times today's level, to help to address chronic power shortages.
Gopalan said SunEdison continued to look at selling projects in various countries to raise capital.
"To grow you need capital. Our balance sheet does not have the necessary capital," he said.
SunEdison has terminated a deal to buy Continuum Wind Energy, which has most of its assets in India, he said.
Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi have done it again. This time they’ve spelled out how 139 countries can each generate all the energy needed for homes, businesses, industry, transportation, agriculture—everything—from wind, solar and water power technologies, by 2050. Their national blueprints, released Nov. 18, follow similar plans they have published in the past few years to run each of the 50 U.S. states on renewables, as well as the entire world. (Have a look for yourself, at your country, using the interactive map below.)
The plans, which list exact numbers of wind turbines, solar farms, hydroelectric dams and such, have been heralded as transformational, and criticized as starry eyed or even nutty.
Determined, Jacobson will take his case to leaders of the 195 nations that will meet at the U.N. climate talks, known as COP 21, which begin in Paris on Nov. 29. His point to them: Although international agreements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are worthwhile, they would not even be needed if countries switched wholesale to renewable energy, ending the combustion of coal, natural gas and oil that creates the vast majority of those emissions, and without any nuclear power. “The people there are just not aware of what’s possible,” says Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s Atmosphere and Energy Program. He is already scheduled to speak twice at the meeting, and will spend the rest of his time trying to talk one on one with national leaders and their aids.
Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi have done it again. This time they’ve spelled out how 139 countries can each generate all the energy needed for homes, businesses, industry, transportation, agriculture—everything—from wind, solar and water power technologies, by 2050. Their national blueprints, released Nov. 18, follow similar plans they have published in the past few years to run each of the 50 U.S. states on renewables, as well as the entire world. (Have a look for yourself, at your country, using the interactive map below.)
The plans, which list exact numbers of wind turbines, solar farms, hydroelectric dams and such, have been heralded as transformational, and criticized as starry eyed or even nutty.
Determined, Jacobson will take his case to leaders of the 195 nations that will meet at the U.N. climate talks, known as COP 21, which begin in Paris on Nov. 29. His point to them: Although international agreements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are worthwhile, they would not even be needed if countries switched wholesale to renewable energy, ending the combustion of coal, natural gas and oil that creates the vast majority of those emissions, and without any nuclear power. “The people there are just not aware of what’s possible,” says Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s Atmosphere and Energy Program. He is already scheduled to speak twice at the meeting, and will spend the rest of his time trying to talk one on one with national leaders and their aids.
