China's Oil Output Unlikely to Rebound Until Prices Top $60

  • Production drop may halt at $50, Bernstein’s Beveridge says
  • Outut down almost 6% this year, hit 6-year low in August
Photographer: Kevin Lee/Bloomberg
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Oil may need to rally further before China’s producers make enough money to reverse a drop in output to the lowest in more than six years.

Production by the world’s biggest consumer after the U.S. will stabilize with prices around $50 a barrel and may not rebound until they are above $60, according to Neil Beveridge, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. China, the world’s fifth-largest producer in 2015, pumped 5.7 percent less crude in the first eight months of the year as state-run companies shut fields too expensive to operate amid the worst price crash in a generation.