By Haitham Haddadin
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Crude oil prices have an "upward bias" long-term, mainly due to strong energy demand from the booming economies of China and India, the CEO of InterContinental Exchange Holdings (ICE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Wednesday.
"These are economies based on the same fuel usage we have in the West ... I just can't see that abating," Jeff Sprecher, the chief executive of the Atlanta-based exchange, told the Reuters Exchanges and Trading Summit.
"While the overheated growth in China we have seen in the past few years may have cooled, it is not quite a headline risk. And India is going to surpass China in terms of population in the next 20 years and is becoming a highly educated middle class society," he added.
"So why wouldn't those people want the same kind of thing you and I want," he said.
Sprecher was speaking as June U.S. crude oil futures jumped to an all-time high of $123.80 per barrel on Wednesday, fueled by government data showing a draw in distillates stocks last week in the United States, the world's top energy consumer.
Pointing to what he called the emergence of "an amazing middle class" in China, he said 15 million people a year were moving to cities and leaving the agricultural sector there.
"That's a new Los Angeles or a new New York being created every year," he said.
"It just says those people are going to need more clothes ... their economic lifestyle is going to go up and their demand for goods and services is going to go up and energy is the underpinning of what fuels that, even it if is not just transportation," Sprecher noted. Continued...
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