Petrobras CEO Sees Oil at Between $105 and $125 per Barrel This Year

Demand from emerging markets and financial flows will keep crude prices high and volatile in a range from $105 to $125 per barrel in 2012, Petrobras CEO Jose Sergio Gabrielli said on Saturday.

Even though in Europe, Japan, and the United States, we have a reduction in consumption of oil products, we have an increase in consumption in China, India, Brazil and other Latin American countries, and Africa, the head of the Brazilian oil giant told Reuters Insider television at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

I think that the price is going to be between $105 and $125 during 2012, he said.

Gabrielli is due to step down next month and be succeeded by veteran engineer Maria das Gracas Foster.

Thanks to newly discovered reserves off Brazil's southern coast, the company hopes to more than double its worldwide output to 6.42 million barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2020, putting it among the world's top producers.

(Reporting by Alex Threlfall, writing by Tomasz Janowski; editing by Patrick Graham)