Will oil hit $200 a barrel after all?

Those 2008 predictions of sky-high prices may not have been as wrong as they were premature. Plus: Investing ideas for crude's comeback.


By Jim Jubak

What ever happened to $200-a-barrel oil?



Maybe it's just been delayed in transit. A recession in the world's developed economies can do that.



Remember Arjun Murti's time in the sun when, in May 2008, the analyst at Goldman Sachs predicted that oil would soon hit $200 a barrel? A number of other prognosticators weren't far behind. T. Boone Pickens predicted in 2008 that oil would hit $150 before the year was out. Some guy named Jim Jubak in April 2008 called for $180 a barrel within two years.



In case you haven't noticed, all of us were wrong. Oil peaked at $147 a barrel in summer 2008 and then plunged to $35 a barrel by June 2009.


Let me rephrase that: We weren't wrong; we were early. (All financial fortunetellers are told over and over again in their training at the Frogwarts School for Financial Wizards that you never, never, never forecast both a price and a date. One or the other. Never both.)




A little thing called the Great Recession killed global demand for oil. For a while.

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