French Oil Corporation: Crude at $45 in 2009, $60 in 2010

(image: beg.utexas.edu)

French oil corporation Total, one of the six private “supermajor” oil companies in the world, announced its predictions for crude prices through a senior executive today.  According to Reuters, Jean-Jacques Mosconi, Total’s vice president of strategy and planning, told reporters his company expects average prices of $40-$45 per barrel in 2009, $60 in 2010, and $80 in 2011.

The 2009 estimate comes in slightly lower than an average prediction of $55 per barrel found by a survey of analysts last month.

Just one more industry giant putting in its two cents about the future of oil prices.  Today’s unstable market and global recession have made for a huge variance among price predictions.  If all of these predictions are taken seriously, we can say that 2009 crude price will average somewhere between $20 and $100 a barrel.  How useful.