The Oil Drum: Canada

The return of $30 oil?

Oil could fall to $40 (U.S.) a barrel or even as low as $30 as speculative investors sell their positions and spare production capacity increases, according to a research report published Monday by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., an independent analysis firm.

The price of crude spiked higher in 2004 as demand from China surged at the same time the key cushion of spare capacity evaporated. As the commodity jumped, billions of dollars from speculative investors piled in, buying futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange, helping push oil to almost $80 a barrel last year.

"We believe such speculative activity created perhaps the biggest artificial distortion of a market since the technology bubble of the late 1990s," analyst Ben Dell of New York-based Sanford said in a 67-page report entitled: "Energy investing: Beware the Ides of March."

"Timing when the good times will be over is difficult but we fear that the collapse could be dramatic."