Crude oil futures traders at commodities exchange, such as New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX or NY Merc) take into consideration a whole host of disparate factors (not excluding such odd non-market factors as the personal health of rulers of large oil producing countries, or prediction of higher than expected winter temperatures, hurricanes, labor strike, pipeline or tanker accidents, etc. in addition to the market supply and demand) in buying or selling crude oil futures, thus determining market prices of crude oil, and yet they seldom are able to come up with precise prediction. Their trade is speculative, rather than based on statistical prediction. They keep their eyes open for non-market triggers for market trends in crude oil supply and demand.

If you think stock market is volatile, commodities market is much more so. Barring tumultuous events in the Gulf or other oil-producing regions, like military attack on Iran by the U.S., the only safe prediction I can venture to make is that the crude oil prices aren’t likely to reach the highs of last year. Historically, the crude oil prices have jumped after such tumultuous events, as the chart in the link shows: http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif.

Simply put, it's hard to be precise to come up with a dollar figure, let alone down to two decimal cents.

So, I'll take that $71.35 prediction with much more than a pinch of salt… more like two sacks of it.

My $0.02