US finanical services company, Morgan Stanley has cut its forecast for Brent crude oil for 2015, reducing its base-case prediction from $98 to $70 a barrel and saying that prices could drop to as low as $43 a barrel.

“Without Opec intervention, markets risk becoming unbalanced, with peak oversupply likely in the second quarter of 2015,” Morgan Stanley said in a report.

The company cut its forecast for 2016 from $102 a barrel to $88.

The US-based ratings agency Fitch has cut its forecasts for oil prices to $83 a barrel in 2015 and $90 a barrel in 2016.

In its Global Economic Outlook, released on 8 December, the company said it expected oil production to fall over the two-year period.

“We expect prices to rise from current levels as demand picks up, in line with our assumption of stronger global GDP growth in 2015 and 2016, and lower production,” it said.

A 20 per cent fall in oil prices will boost global GDP by around 0.3 per cent over two years, according to the report.

In a statement released on 5 December, US ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service forecast that Brent oil prices would “hover around $80-85 a barrel in 2015”.

Oil prices have declined by more than a third since June, and have hit five-year lows in the wake of Opec’s November meeting, when the group decided to keep its production static at 30 million barrels a day.