Oil price rise to continue for decade: Jim Rogers

“Over the course of time, it’s a bull market,” the chairman of Rogers Holdings said Friday after an investor conference in Kuala Lumpur.

While the oil price could fall to $75 or rise to $175, the market will continue to increase over the next 10 years, he said.

Crude oil futures have dropped 22 percent since touching $147.27 a barrel on July 11, the highest since trading began in 1983.

Oil slid more than $6 a barrel Sunday, falling the most in percentage terms since December 2004, as the rising dollar curbed demand for commodities as an inflation hedge and BP Plc restored shipments on a Caspian Sea pipeline through the former Soviet republic of Georgia to Turkey.

Rogers said August 21 in Bangkok that declines in commodity prices from record highs represented a temporary reversal in a bull market that will last for several years.

David Cohen, director of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore, said the rise in the crude oil price “was a recognition” of the growing demand of emerging economies like China and India.

“Those countries will continue with their development process and continue to outpace global growth,” he said.

Dollar gains

Soybeans, copper, platinum and crude oil have dropped from all-time highs after a rally in the dollar curbed demand for raw materials as a hedge against inflation and concerns increased that economic growth will slow.

The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index plunged 10 percent in July, the biggest drop in 28 years.

Crude-oil futures for October delivery fell $6.59, or 5.4 percent, to $114.59 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday.

Crude oil may rise next week because of a weakening dollar, rising tension between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s second-biggest crude exporter after Saudi Arabia, and falling gasoline stockpiles.

Sixteen of 29 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News, or 55 percent, said prices will increase through August 29.

Seven of the respondents, or 24 percent, said there will be little change and six said there would be a drop in prices.

Last week, 63 percent expected prices to increase.

“I can certainly see crude continuing above $100 a barrel for the longer term,” Cohen said.

“The fundamentals of supply and demand should be supportive” of prices.

Source: Bloomberg