继续layoff

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: l% ^* t" G) F8 h; v6 T: \By Barani Krishnan

1 i0 Z* W- e: c5 R) I$ a0 mNEW 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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9 J% L* F- K* _9 o2 e: B) s2 T2 N% ]Joining 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.

"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".

. K' A6 _' a: r4 }. LCiting "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

storage continues to fill."

3 a, y- P4 C6 ~# _  H0 _U.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.

: D; E# H; `: x% C9 [, F6 V) ?  IThe front-month in Brent <LCOc1>, the global benchmark for oil, was off 70 cents, or 1.3 percent, at $48.19.

+ L" j: r8 V( C3 m3 z. b6 E4 |2 [2 |( mBoth 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.

6 I4 m0 M( r  N1 Z# Q% r- CThe 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.

2 F4 E: j) Y" KCrude 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.

Analysts say the market is rebalancing, but high stocks will keep weighing on prices into next year.

Germany's Commerzbank said Brent was likely to trade at $55 by the end of 2015, and around $65 by end-2016.
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' ?$ S! ^9 {# \9 ZInvestors 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.

5 F( m- s% O" J/ }, F  b(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington and Christopher Johnson in London and Meeyoung Cho in Seoul; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)