Experienced commodity investor Tim Guinness expects the oil price will hit $150 a barrel in the next five to 10 years before a demand shock reverses the current trend of increasing prices.

Guinness, lead manager on the recently launched Guinness Asset Management Global Energy fund as well as a raft of other propositions, said the price of the 'black gold' would continue to grow in the long term, with OPEC managing it up steadily until it reached a level where demand was curbed by steep prices.

He said: ‘The oil price is currently at around $106 a barrel, but energy demand from emerging economies is a near irresistible force, and we are unlikely to see a curbing of demand without a $150-$200 spike.’

Mapping out the investment case for his latest venture, Guinness noted that OPEC had managed to build in an average increase in price of roughly $10 a year without causing demand to fall, a factor which supported investment into oil producers.

As well as OPEC’s influence, Guinness identified that the price of proven oil reserves, which are currently changing hands at a discount, was also likely to return to historic levels, providing further upside.

He said: ‘Traditionally, proven oil reserves have changed hands at a third of the oil price, but now they are at a discount and trading at around a fifth of the price.

‘So there’s upside potential for that to go up when people become more comfortable with higher oil prices, and that would then result in a re-rating for companies with proven reserves.’

The manager added that commodities as a whole were only a half to two thirds of the way through their current cycle, a factor which provided support to energy funds, and he backed energy equities to achieve significant returns over the next five years as long as the current drivers, chiefly emerging market demand and OPEC's pricing policy, remained in place.