The Spectre of $30 Oil Resurfaces With Brent's Tuesday Dip Toward $44 Per Barrel

Analysts says a high of $75 next year is possible

Accompanying Brent crude's fall earlier on Tuesday to a two month low of $44.14 are renewed predictions that oil will dip into the $30s before hitting the $60 level at year end, and then $75 within a year.

Bart Melek, head of commodities strategy at TD Securities, told media that "Technicals will seek a level around $40.38, then we'll see," adding that if $40 is broken, the next level would be just above $36.

This dovetails with Morgan Stanley analysts stating in a note that, "Oversupply should return by August, reinforcing a return to the $30-50 oversupply pricing regime."

However, both parties insist that panic is not warranted: Melek points out that "the fundamental outlook is much, much better than it was six months ago: we're still looking toward $60 for year end," while Morgan Stanley predicts a return to a balanced market in the second half of 2017.

Better still, an inverse head and shoulders pattern on a chart developed by Craig Johnson, senior technical market strategist at Piper Jaffray is a traditional sign of an uptrend and compels him to believe that crude prices will reach as high as $75 per barrel in about a year.

He told CNBC's Power Lunch, "The last time I saw a setup like this was the bottom of the market at about 2008, 2009 on the S&P 500: that was a nine-month setup, and standing that measured objective up led to a very nice return in the markets.

"Looking at this price objective [that's] standing it up, you could be between $70 to $75 in oil in about 12 months, based upon the top-line break in that neckline."

As usual with bullish and bearish oil predictions made simultaneously, someone steps in as a moderate voice of reason, and this week that voice is provided by Michael Wittner, head of oil research at Societe Generale, who doubts oil will plummet to the $30s and instead views the floor at around $40:  "I know it feels ugly out there, but I don't think this is any way a replay of the first quarter: it's very different — that transition from the huge global oversupply to balanced is really important."

He went on to say that the near-term worries "are a bit overblown: if I look at product inventories, yeah, they're high, but they've been high for months.

"Maybe markets are waking up to it: it's not like we've taken a sudden turn for the worse."

Nonetheless, near-term oil prices in the $40s seems to be shaping up as the new compromise in the analytical community overall: earlier this week, BNP Paribas SA and JBC Energy GmbH predicted that level for later this year due to production recovery in Canada, Iran, Nigeria, and the U.S.