Higher oil prices have damped the consumption of oil in the United States, but growing concerns about long-term supply, along with large prospective increases in demand from the rapidly growing economies of China, India, and other emerging-market economies have fueled an increase in futures prices of oil.
In recent weeks, spot prices have eased back from mid-October’s record levels, and market participants in oil futures markets seem to expect spot prices to ease somewhat further over the next two years. But both the global demand for oil and the availability of new supplies are notoriously difficult to predict.