Goldman Sparks Crude Rebound

Updated from 1:08 p.m. EST

Oil rallied Thursday, spurred on by surging gasoline prices and a Goldman Sachs research note that said a $100-per-barrel price isn't out of the realm of reason.

The May futures contract closed at $1.41 to $55.40 a barrel in Nymex electronic trading. Gasoline futures, which expire Thursday, spiked more than 5.5 cents to $1.653 a gallon, topping the record all-time high of $1.59 it reached last week.

Crude futures caught a bid after Goldman put out a note arguing oil is entering a bull run that could, in certain scenarios, take crude above $100 a barrel. The bank said those prices would eventually crimp global demand, but until then it predicted major upside for big oil producers.

"Oil markets may have entered the early stages of what we have referred to as a 'super spike' period -- a multiyear trading band of oil prices high enough to meaningfully reduce energy consumption and recreate a spare capacity cushion only after which will lower energy prices return," Goldman Sachs noted.

Goldman raised the upper end of its estimate of where oil might conceivably "spike" to $105 a barrel from $80 a barrel. Its general forecast of West Texas Intermediate crude prices moved to $50 in 2005 and $55 in 2006, up from $41 in 2005 and $40 in 2006, previously.

Since Goldman has a big commodities trading operation, a lot of investors wondered about the self-fulfilling aspect of Thursday's call, and if Goldman stood to profit from it.

Independent analysts who spoke to TheStreet.com were reluctant to ascribe a trading-based motive to the research, noting that Goldman is fairly unspecific about what could drive crude to its $105-a-barrel ceiling. Instead, they said, the call seemed more like a marketing ploy, attaching Goldman's name to a story -- oil -- that is increasingly the biggest on Wall Street.