Don't look now, but oil prices are surging again, and experts fear it's about to get worse. The price of crude oil reached over $93 a barrel in recent days, the highest of the year and up more than 34% since March. This as the Biden administration just released a new offshore leasing plan with the fewest leases in history, just three in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, the administration has depleted our Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to a 40-year low, with surging oil prices making it more difficult to replenish.
With all of these factors at play, some oil industry leaders are predicting the price of crude will soon pass $100 a barrel and could reach $150. Karr Ingham, petroleum economist with the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, agrees that is a possibility. "Right now, global demand is soaring because of growth, and meeting that growth largely means petroleum energy, as that still powers 80 percent-plus of what goes on in the world today," he says. "If you have growing demand, but not an appetite for increasing production to meet that demand, that's just a recipe for higher prices."
Ingham argues the White House's weak offshore leasing plan demonstrates a lack of seriousness in addressing our energy needs, at a time when demand is soaring. "This administration has turned this offshore leasing program into an absolute joke," he tells KTRH. "They were slow and reluctant to even develop this plan, it is way past due, and then of course when it comes out it is just as minimalist as possible."
If the status quo continues, Ingham believes those dire predictions of other industry leaders could become reality. "We have record and growing demand for petroleum energy products, but an unwillingness to meet that demand," he says. "Which means we're headed for a bit of a nasty situation, and it may well be 150-dollar crude oil."