BP boss Bob Dudley: Oil prices falling to $10 “not impossible”
BP's chief executive, Bob Dudley, has said it's "not impossible" oil prices will fall as low as $10 per barrel, as some analysts have predicted.
Standard Chartered previously warned a worse-case scenario could see oil fall to this level, because its being moved by changes in other assets prices such as the US dollar and stocks, rather than oil market fundamentals. The last time oil sank this low was at the height of the Asian financial crisis in 1998.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, is currently down 2.92 per cent at $27.92 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the global benchmark, has shed 3.79 per cent to $27.38.
Speaking during an interview with the BBC, Dudley added that he thinks oil prices will pick up in the second half of this year, and end somewhere in the $50s.
"It has been low in the last year, I think it has been lower for longer but it is not lower forever," he said.
"I think it's going to be a year of two halves. We could see some real volatility in the first quarter [and] second quarter. And then … in the second half of the year prices would start on an upward trajectory."
"We could see a price $30 to $40 by the middle of the year and I think towards the end of the year it could be into the $50s."