Crude oil prices will rise through the back half of the 2020s while natural gas (NG=F) prices will fall, Goldman Sachs analysts said in a duo of notes released yesterday and today outlining the bank’s long-term view on the energy products.
The market is in near-total consensus that oil is headed for a major supply glut in 2026, as the OPEC+ cartel has continued to raise its production levels and Beijing has slowed its market-buoying purchases, which led headlines throughout the first half of 2025.
Prices on Brent crude oil (BZ=F), the international benchmark, and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude (CL=F), the US benchmark, will each fall by around 13% in 2026 as the “last supply wave” passes through the market, Goldman Sachs analysts wrote.
But the investment bank sees price movement reversing through 2027 and into the 2030s as production falls and markets turn back into a deficit, with Brent and WTI climbing to $80 and $76 per barrel, respectively, far above current pricing at $64 and $60.
Brent and WTI crude futures are down by roughly 13.7% and 15.5%, respectively, since the beginning of the year.
In natural gas, for which demand has been steadily climbing and prices have increased by more than 28% in the past six months, Goldman Sachs analysts see the opposite movement.
While new liquified natural gas (LNG) projects have lifted global LNG supply by 5% year over year in 2025, the bank sees European storage — cheaper relative to the rest of the global market — absorbing much of the excess, keeping prices low and encouraging production in the US, where export demand is booming.
But eventually, Goldman Sachs analysts wrote, the “largest ever LNG supply wave” will reach levels that will overwhelm European storage capacity and even exceed demand in Asia, pushing prices sharply down across the US, European, and Asian markets through 2029.
Looking past 2030, Goldman Sachs sees demand, especially from China, catching back up and normalizing the market, but only after several years of depressed prices for the natural gas industry.