by Liam Halligan
Telegraph.co.uk
In the absence of a major financial meltdown, oil will end 2016 north of $60 a barrel,” this column stated at the turn of the year. It was a forecasting flourish possibly fuelled by one Christmas brandy too many.
With just four months of 2016 to go, though, I’m sticking to my Yuletide view.
Attempting to predict the oil price is crazy. Yet no decent economist can afford not to. The world economy still revolves around oil – used in everything from transport and electricity generation to the production of plastics, synthetics and so much else. And for all the breathless talk about renewables, and the grim inevitability of growing nuclear dependence, we remain addicted to oil.