Oil price rise to continue for a decade: Jim Rogers

Jim Rogers, who in April 2006 correctly forecast the oil price would reach $100 a barrel and gold $1,000 an ounce, said he expects oil to continue to increase over the next decade.

“Over the course of time, it’s a bull market,’’ the chairman of Rogers Holdings said today after an investor conference in Kuala Lumpur. While the oil price could fall to $75 or rise to $175, the market will continue to increase over the next 10 years, he said.

Crude oil futures have dropped 22 per cent since touching $147.27 a barrel on July 11, the highest since trading began in 1983. Oil slid more than $6 a barrel yesterday, falling the most in percentage terms since December 2004, as the rising dollar curbed demand for commodities as an inflation hedge and BP Plc restored shipments on a Caspian Sea pipeline through the former Soviet republic of Georgia to Turkey.

Rogers said August 21 in Bangkok that declines in commodity prices from record highs represented a temporary reverse in a bull market that will last for several years.

David Cohen, director of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore, said the rise in the crude oil price “was a recognition’’ of the growing demand of emerging economies such as China and India.

Dollar gains
Soybeans, copper, platinum and crude oil have dropped from all-time highs after a rally in the dollar curbed demand for raw materials as a hedge against inflation and concerns increased that economic growth will slow. The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index plunged 10 per cent in July, the biggest drop in 28 years.