Brent crude to hit USD 90 a barrel by end of year

Goldman Sachs ramped up its already optimistic forecast on Sunday, calling for Brent crude to hit USD 90 a barrel by the end of the year. That's up from its previous call for USD 80. "While we have long held a bullish oil view," Goldman Sachs strategists wrote in a note to clients, "the current global oil supply-demand deficit is larger than we expected."

Brent crude, the world benchmark, jumped another 1.5 per cent to USD 79.25 a barrel on Monday. That leaves Brent on track for its highest close since October 2018. As per Goldman Sachs, high oil prices could get even higher. That suggests gasoline prices may remain elevated, reported CNN.

Goldman Sachs said the current supply-demand deficit "will not be reversed in coming months, in our view, as its scale will overwhelm both the willingness and ability for OPEC+ to ramp up." The White House has called for OPEC+ to accelerate its increase in production, a call that has so far gone unheeded by the Saudi Arabia and Russia-led alliance of producers.

OPEC+ is a loosely affiliated entity consisting of the OPEC members and 10 of the world's major non-OPEC oil-exporting nations which are - Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, South Sudan and Sudan.