Oil prices will remain stuck in a back-and-forth market, analyst says

Oil prices will remain stuck in a back-and-forth market, analyst says·CNBC

Traders have bid up oil futures on speculation that producers will take measures to prop up crude prices, but any such deal might do little to quickly bring supply and demand into balance, ClearView Energy Partners Managing Director Jacques Rousseau said Monday.

As a result, crude prices could continue swinging back and forth, he said.

A rally that lifted benchmarks about 16 percent and pushed Brent (Intercontinental Exchange Europe: @LCO.1) above $50 a barrel during the last seven sessions lost steam on Monday as market watchers including Morgan Stanley said the gains were overdone. The bank said it was "highly unlikely" OPEC members and Russia would be able to overcome the many headwinds to striking a deal.

That run-up followed a collapse in prices from June peaks above $50 to a brief dip back below $40 for U.S. crude (New York Mercantile Exchange: @CL.1).

History has shown that even when OPEC cooperates to cut or freeze production in order to support prices, few members adhere to their quotas, Rousseau said. Further, top exporter Saudi Arabia has prioritized defending its share of the market over propping up prices, he said.

But even in the unlikely event of a deal, Rousseau said there is simply too much capacity among non-OPEC producers, particularly U.S. drillers that tap oil trapped in shale rock formations. Throughout the downturn, these producers have managed to lower the cost of producing a barrel of oil by improving drilling techniques and securing discounts from service providers.

As crude prices have recovered to between $40 and $50 a barrel, some have announced plans to increase oil rig production, threatening to put more oil into a market struggling to work through oversupplies of both crude and refined fuel products.

The key to achieving balance is further drawdowns in stockpiles, Rousseau said.

"If OPEC takes some oil off the market, that would happen, but they would really need to take about a half a million barrels per day off the market, and that would not really impact anything until we get to the second half of next year," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"So I think we're in this game of a lot of back and forth until we can see something significant happen," he said.

Pavel Molchanov, energy equity research analyst Raymond James, said the global oil market looks fundamentally more bullish than it did 100 days ago despite today's lower prices. Raymond James expects oil prices to rise to $60 a barrel by year-end, driven by falling production among non-OPEC producers, he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Monday.

U.S. oil production has fallen by about a million barrels per day from a peak of nearly 9.7 million barrels per day in April 2015.

Molchanov acknowledged that inventories remain high, but said global demand growth is on pace to shrink stockpiles by more than a million barrels a day in the third and fourth quarters and throughout 2017.

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