JPMorgan Chase & Co, the third-largest US bank, raised its forecast for oil to average US$71.69 a barrel this year, up from an earlier prediction of US$66.40 for this year.
Oil prices have risen 20 percent in the past month amid concern supplies are not sufficient to meet demand.
The price reached US$98.62 a barrel on Wednesday, the highest since the contract started trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1983.
"Clearly, the last month was a surprise," JPMorgan analyst Katherine Spector said in a report released late on Friday. "Initially, we had expected [West Texas Intermediate] to peak at around US$80 late in the third quarter followed by a downward correction of roughly 20 percent into year-end."
Oil rising to US$100 a barrel is "entirely possible," the report said. "Subsequent price moves could be violent -- and we anticipate downward."
The price of oil should average US$88 a barrel in the fourth quarter, the report said.
Crude oil for December delivery rose US$0.86, or 0.9 percent, to settle at US$96.32 a barrel at 2:55pm on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday.
Nigerian oil minister Odein Ajumogobia said on Saturday there is no fundamental justification for oil at US$100 a barrel and Nigeria is assuming that prices will not last at this level.
Ajumogobia, who will be heading to Riyadh to attend an OPEC heads of state summit on Saturday, said that no-one in the oil exporters' group would be surprised if the price fell to US$80 in the next few weeks.
"US$100 oil was speculated about three, four, five months ago and we are there now. There is no indication why it has reached US$100 in terms of supply and demand indices," he said in a telephone interview.
Ajumogobia said there was no indication that US$100 oil had had an impact on demand, but he said OPEC was concerned not to undermine economic growth.
Meanwhile, France on Saturday called on oil producing countries to increase both output and exploration because of rising demand.
French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said she wanted the issue discussed at a meeting of EU finance ministers today and at a G20 meeting in South Africa at the end of next week.
Asked about the chances of an increase in OPEC oil supply before the end of this year, Ajumogobia said: "That will be indicated by how severe the winter is and other factors."
"What we are looking for is a trend. Because we are going down a road no-one has been down before, it is difficult to see a trend," he said.
"Our budget benchmark [for next year] is US$53.80, so we are being reasonably conservative in terms of `this is not a trend that is going to continue.' That is the assumption. I don't see that oil is going to go back to US$40, but I think US$100 is excessive," he said.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS