Goldman Sachs Warns of Sub-$40 Oil Under One Scenario
Wednesday Apr 16, 2025
URL:
https://www.rigzone.com/news/goldma...nder_one_scenario-16-apr-2025-180245-article/
In a report sent to Rigzone by the Goldman Sachs team on Monday, Goldman Sachs analysts revealed that they see the Brent oil price falling to under $40 per barrel under one scenario.
“In a more extreme and less likely scenario with both a global GDP slowdown and a full unwind of OPEC cuts, which would discipline non-OPEC supply, we estimate that Brent would fall under $40 in late 2025,” the analysts warned in the report.
This is one of four “downside price scenarios”, the Goldman Sachs analysts highlighted in the report. The analysts outlined that, under their base case, they expect Brent to average $63 per barrel in the remainder of 2025 and $58 per barrel in 2026.
“Our base case assumes that one, the U.S. avoids recession and two, OPEC+ supply rises only modestly,” the Goldman Sachs analysts said in the report.
The analysts went on to warn in the report that risks to their oil price forecast are mostly to the downside.
Outlining another downside price scenario in the report, the analysts said, “assuming a typical U.S. recession shock and our OPEC baseline, we estimate that Brent would average $61/53 in Bal25/Cal26, respectively”.
“In a global GDP slowdown scenario and keeping our OPEC baseline unchanged, we estimate that Brent would average $58/47 in Bal25/Cal26. We estimate a similar price path assuming our GDP baseline and a full unwind of the 2.2 million barrels per day of OPEC8+ cuts,” they added in the report, outlining another downside scenario.
“We also see some downside risks to oil prices from a potentially larger rise in OECD commercial stocks even under our supply-demand baseline,” the analysts went on to state in the report.
“Specifically, OECD stocks may rise more if floating storage - which tends to build on attractive storage incentives in contango markets - or China inventories (perhaps on fears about weak demand or on a slowdown in strategic restocking) were to rise less than our base case,” they added.
The Goldman Sachs analysts also highlighted one “upside price scenario” in the report.
“Oil prices may be higher than our forecast under a sharp de-escalating pivot in U.S. trade policy,” the analysts noted.
“If global GDP were to realize in line with our mid-March expectations - quite an optimistic scenario - and keeping our OPEC baseline, we estimate that Brent would average $67/64 in Bal25/Cal26,” they added.
Goldman Sachs’ report outlined that the company’s base scenario sees the Brent spot price averaging $66 per barrel in 2025 and $58 per barrel in 2026. The Brent spot price is expected to come in at $65 per barrel in the second quarter of this year, $63 per barrel in the third quarter, $62 per barrel in the fourth quarter, $61 per barrel in the first quarter of 2026, $59 per barrel in the second quarter, $57 per barrel in the third quarter, and $56 per barrel in the fourth quarter, the report highlighted.
The report also outlined that the company’s base case sees the Brent Futures price averaging $63 per barrel across 2025 and 2026. Goldman Sachs expects the Brent Futures price to average $64 per barrel in the second quarter of this year, $63 per barrel in the third quarter, $62 per barrel across the fourth quarter of 2025 and first quarter of 2026, and $63 per barrel across the second, third, and fourth quarters of next year, the report revealed.
Rigzone has contacted the White House, OPEC, the State Council of the People's Republic of China, and the OECD for comment on Goldman Sachs’ report. At the time of writing, none of the above have responded to Rigzone.
According to a BMI report sent to Rigzone by the Fitch Group on Monday, BMI sees the Brent oil price averaging $68 per barrel in 2025 and $71 per barrel in 2026. A Bloomberg consensus included in the report projected that Brent will average $73 per barrel this year and $71 per barrel next year. BMI highlighted in the report that it is a contributor to the Bloomberg consensus.
A research note sent to Rigzone by Natasha Kaneva, Head of Global Commodities Strategy at J.P. Morgan, on April 14 showed that J.P. Morgan expects the average Brent price to come in at $66 per barrel in 2025 and $57 per barrel in 2026.
In its latest short term energy outlook, which was released on April 10, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that the Brent spot price will average $67.87 per barrel in 2025 and $61.48 per barrel in 2026.
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