- Global Selloff From Dubai Shows Signs of Winding Down
- Dubai Stock Selloff May Bring Buying Opportunity
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Tiger Woods Out of Hospital After Accident
- Dubai Fallout Is a Correction, Not Another Crisis: El-Erian
- Dubai's Debt Woes Signal New Era for Creditors
- Get Paid Six Figures to Wear a T-Shirt?
- The World's Biggest Debtor Nations
- Five Tips for Buying a Foreclosed Home
- U.S. Stocks Fall on Dubai Worries
- Black Friday at Best Buy
- Strategists on Dubai: Avoid 'Rash Moves' Now
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Dubai Stock Market Fear Has 'Legs': Dennis Gartman
- Obama's Emission Reduction Pledge Paints Future for Autos
- Is Super Bowl Halftime Act Too Old?
- Surprising Options Trades in TiVo Shares
- EA Sports Hopes to Pump Up Sales Through Pop-Up Locations
MOST SHARED
- Tiger Woods Out of Hospital After Accident
- The Good Entrepreneur Winner
- Get Paid Six Figures to Wear a T-Shirt?
- Dubai Spooks Investors But May Bring Buying Opportunity
- Global Selloff From Dubai Woes Shows Signs of Winding Down
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Halftime Report: Dubai - First Ripple Of Larger Crisis?
- 8 Retailers that Gain During the Holidays
- Next Week: Cash In Now Or Wait For A Santa Rally?
Text Size 
Oil prices are heading lower — possibly to below $40 a barrel again in the coming months —while natural gas will be the best energy bet for investors, analyst Peter Beutel told CNBC.
 |
With prices for US light, sweet crude eclipsing the $70 mark and raising worries that gasoline prices could be heading towards their peak last summer, Beutel said investors would be better off betting against any big moves higher.
"I think there's a chance we may be setting up to make a double bottom," Beutel, an analyst with Cameron Hanover, said in a live interview.
While oil is unlikely to see its $32.40 bottom achieved early in 2009 anytime soon, Beutel thinks it could dip as low as $39.80 to $40 by late fall or the early part of 2010.
The reasons: There's still ample supply despite this week's report that reserves were drawn down more than expected, and consumer demand will not strengthen enough to justify another run like in 2008.
"If you took a pail of water and threw it down a bathtub, once it hit the end it would slosh back, and that's what prices are doing," Beutel said. "We were at 147, we went down to 32 —this is a slosh back, and soon I think we're going to see what I'm calling the ripple-forward."
For the longer term he sees oil prices stabilizing until the middle part of the next decade, when the "peak oil" effect will kick in, a term used to describe the point at which the maximum amount of oil production is reached and begins to decline, setting off what economists fear will be a severe price spiral.
In the meantime, Beutel said investors would be better off buying natural gas because it remains in relatively scarce supply compared to oil.
"I think natural gas has the ability to go a lot higher over the next five, six years, whereas I think certainly over the next six months oil is going to experience a little bit of rockiness," he said.
Print
Email
- These four sectors will be the next to lead the market.
- Zhu Zhu Pets are this year's must-have toy, fetching $40 or more on eBay.
- From the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that file, we present Jason Sadler, a man whose job is wearing T-shirts.
- It may be the most unusual guide to business you'll read.
- Shopping for a gadget hound? The choices can be baffling. Here are a few that should be a hit.
- "The Who" will be the halftime act for Super Bowl XLIV on Feb. 7 in Miami. Is the NFL behind the times?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes