ANZ Lifts Brent Forecast to $105 as Banks Price Middle East Risk

ANZ raised its end-year Brent forecast to $105 per barrel on Friday, a $10-per-barrel hike built on one assumption: that the constraints already squeezing Middle East exports, shipping lanes and refined-product supplies persist through December.

The move matters for anyone planning refinery runs, cargo bookings or hedge ratios for the winter quarter. A bank call is analysis, not fact — but when three major desks move the same direction in the same week, the price commentary itself becomes a planning input.

What is ANZ actually forecasting?

The Australian bank's strategists were explicit that their revised number does not depend on a fresh escalation. "The forecast does not require another geopolitical shock," they wrote in a note carried by Bloomberg. "Rather, it assumes that the constraints already confronting Middle Eastern exports, shipping and refined-product markets persist through year-end."

That framing is the important part for practitioners. The $105 call is a baseline, not a tail scenario. If the Middle East conflict escalates, the bank said, prices would go higher still.

ANZ also flagged something structural: the world has run out of buffers to absorb a new shock. "Eight months of adapting to disrupted Middle Eastern supply have materially weakened the buffers that absorbed the initial shock," the strategists wrote.

In plain words: eight months of rerouting cargoes and reworking supply chains have spent the slack that cushioned the original disruption, so the next shock lands on an already-stretched system.

The headline fragment circulating with the note — "America has just 75 days…" — points to thin spare cover in downstream inventories, and the bank's commentary that diesel prices could remain elevated frames the refined-product side of the squeeze.

How do the other desks line up?

UBS moved earlier the same week. It lifted its Brent forecast to $110 per barrel for the end of 2026, up from $100 previously, citing elevated uncertainty around the Middle East conflict, regional production and exports, and global oil demand.

Goldman Sachs sits below both, but with an explicit upward skew. Daan Struyven, co-head of Global Commodities Research and head of Oil Research, sees Brent at $90 per barrel by the end of this year and an annual average of $80 in 2027.

"The risks to our forecasts are clearly skewed to the upside," Struyven said last week.

Goldman puts the baked-in risk premium in Brent at roughly $27 per barrel at current levels. Stripping it out fast would require more than quiet on the water. "But for the risk premium to come off quickly, you would probably need to see a diplomatic solution that market participants see as sustainable," Struyven said.

That is the operative word for traders: sustainable. Markets have discounted ceasefires before; a premium this size will not clear on headlines alone.

What is moving the market right now?

Oil prices were heading for a fourth consecutive monthly gain on Friday. The proximate drivers are Houthi attacks escalating against Saudi Arabia and market positioning for a potential new round of U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran.

The spread across the three desks — $90, $105, $110 — tells its own story about how unsettled the consensus is.

For refiners, the takeaway is that freight and product-market constraints, not just crude supply, are what the forecasts assume will hold through year-end. For hedgers, Goldman's $27 risk premium is the number to watch: it comes off only on a durable diplomatic settlement, and it widens on any strike on Iranian infrastructure.

The watch items: whether the Houthi campaign against Saudi facilities intensifies, whether U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran materialize, and whether any diplomatic track the market judges sustainable emerges.