New York, June 15 (PTI): Crude oil price may fall by nearly half to below $75 a barrel after 20 years, feels Goldman Sachs analyst Arjun N. Murti, who shot to fame as “oil guru” for rightly predicting a sharp spike much in advance.

It was Murti, an energy analyst at the global investment-banking giant, who predicted last month that crude prices were heading towards the $150-200-a-barrel level in the next six months to two years.

Crude prices, which settled at $134.80 on Friday at the New York Mercantile Exchange, recently touched the $140-mark and has been a key concern amid rising inflationary pressures across the world.

While reasserting his view that crude oil was likely to remain strong in the near future, Murti said in an interview with the US stock market weekly Barron’s that Goldman Sachs’ long-term forecast for 20 years was that the price could fall back to $75 a barrel.

“We have always assumed that, at some point, you get a sustained drop in demand. Our long-term oil forecast is that it will fall to $75 per barrel, or some lower number,” Barron’s quoted Murti as saying.

In a Goldman Sachs research note last month, Murti had written that the possibility of oil price rising to $150-200 per barrel level was increasingly likely over the next six to 24 months.