Bill Smead, chief investment officer at Smead Capital Management, has a bold market call: that oil prices could soar more than 100% in the next few years. Smead told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Tuesday that he expects crude prices to rise to between $150 to $200 a barrel over the next three to five years. That’s an increase of between 100% and $170% from Tuesday’s Brent crude price of around $74 per barrel. It comes as inflation is set to be a stickier problem than anticipated, according to Smead. “Too many people with too much money [are] chasing too few goods,” he said. “Right now, if you’re a business and you want to hire unskilled labor in the United States, the price seems to go up about 10% every six months,” he said. “Inflation is going to be a problem that is going to be a game changer.” In fact, the picture painted by oil producer group OPEC earlier this week suggests strong demand well into the future. The group expects global oil demand to hit 110 million barrels a day in about 20 years , pushing the world’s energy demand up by 23%. Others have also taken a bullish stance on oil prices over recent weeks. Eric Nuttall, senior portfolio manager at Ninepoint Partners, said earlier this month that oil prices are through the lows of the year, after OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia announced voluntary production cuts. Research firm Rystad Energy noted last week that much will depend on China’s economic performance in the second half of this year, and the ability of the U.S. and Europe to avoid an economic slowdown amid rate hikes. Nevertheless, it said: “We believe that, at some point in the coming weeks, market fundamentals will drive the oil market. Upside price pressure will materialize soon.” Stock picks Energy stocks have underperformed the broader market this year, with the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund losing around 8% year to date. But fund managers Smead and Nuttall see this as an opportunity. Smead likes Warren Buffett-favorite Occidental Petroleum in particular because of its plan to capture and store carbon dioxide — a bet that the world will continue to be dependent on oil and climate goals will only be met if emissions are removed from the environment. “This carbon capture thing could easily be to OXY what the cloud business AWS has been to Amazon. In fact, in the case of Amazon, their cloud business basically has been the only profitable part of that company,” said Smead. “It would only make sense that the people that [are best at] taking carbon out of the ground would be the best at putting it back in the ground.” He also named Devon Energy as another stock he likes. Nuttall likes Cenovus Energy and MEG Energy . Both companies have a high free cash flow yield of 12-18% and 19-24% respectively, and Nuttall expects them to hit their last debt target by the year-end, pivoting toward 100% of free cash flow returned to shareholders. – CNBC’s Ying Shan Lee contributed to this report.
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