PARIS, Dec 26: Oil prices of near $100 per barrel caused alarm in consuming countries in 2007 and analysts forecast another tense crude market next year with triple-figure records a real prospect.

Despite a murky outlook for the world economy, crude prices are seen settling at elevated levels, spelling more pain for consumers and a steady flow of petrodollars for the world’s oil exporters.

From a low point of just below 50 dollars per barrel in January, prices doubled in 2007, hitting 99.29 dollars a barrel on Nov 21, an all-time record.

Oil forecasting is a notoriously difficult business, but few had expected such a run-up — apart from an analyst at investment bank Goldman Sachs who has achieved some fame for foreseeing early in 2005 a “super spike” in prices to 105 dollars.“People at the beginning of this year would never have dreamt that prices would have reached such exalted heights,” said a London-based analyst for the Centre for Global Energy Studies, Leo Drollas.

Goldman Sachs, one of the most active banks in the energy market, raised its price forecasts for 2008 by 10 dollars on December 12, with average benchmark US prices now seen at 95 dollars.

The price could reach 105 dollars by the end of 2008, it said.

—AFP