继续layoff

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/ j/ G* l( u: l# ]( S1 m3 e1 oBy Barani Krishnan

! r; l% y7 i8 u7 UNEW YORK (Reuters) - Crude futures fell on Friday after Wall Street's most influential voice in oil trading, Goldman Sachs, slashed its price outlook through next year, citing oversupply and concerns about China's economy.
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0 [% P+ Z* V) x' uJoining Germany's Commerzbank and a long list of other banks in cutting price projections, Goldman lowered its 2016 forecast for U.S. crude to $45 a barrel from $57 previously, and Brent to $49.50 from $62.

. I! B% t; e9 R* f) K5 X; S9 E"The oil market is even more oversupplied than we had expected and we forecast this surplus to persist in 2016," Goldman said in a note entitled "Lower for even longer".

Citing "operational stress" as a growing downside risk to its forecast, Goldman said crude could fall further to near $20 a barrel. "While not our base case, the potential for oil prices to fall to such levels ... is becoming greater as

! ]- j$ z- u5 [' Z3 O% c4 Gstorage continues to fill."
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7 m2 S! @% d% j/ JU.S. crude futures' front-month contract <CLc1> was down $1, or 2.2 percent, at $44.92 a barrel by 11:54 a.m. EDT.

2 A; D' Q: W( U. d8 P  Q  Z* _9 jThe front-month in Brent <LCOc1>, the global benchmark for oil, was off 70 cents, or 1.3 percent, at $48.19.

Both crude benchmarks had fallen about 3 percent, before paring loses with stocks on Wall Street. The U.S. stocks have provided direction to oil over the last two weeks as investors grappled with mixed fundamentals for crude.
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" ]8 I# {! }9 H. b. T1 V; }1 h( N% NThe oil market is waiting next for a weekly reading of the U.S. oil rig count, due at 1:00 p.m. ET. The data will show for whether oil producers were cutting back on drilling as prices head lower again after a brief rebound in the second quarter.
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Crude prices have more than halved over the past year, with Brent tumbling from nearly $120 a barrel in the middle of 2014 to below $43 last month. Prices collapsed as a global glut of crude pushed commercial and government inventories to all-time highs.
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Analysts say the market is rebalancing, but high stocks will keep weighing on prices into next year.
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Germany's Commerzbank said Brent was likely to trade at $55 by the end of 2015, and around $65 by end-2016.
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Investors shrugged off a report from the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which advises the world's biggest economies on energy policy. The IEA said a move by the world's big oil exporters in OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, to defend their market share by not reducing production, appeared to be working.
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% G, a) d4 Z. w' K: T5 D- A( ^$ R(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington and Christopher Johnson in London and Meeyoung Cho in Seoul; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)