Oil prices have a significant impact on the world economy, positive for exporters and negative for importers to oversimplify a bit. They are also known to be highly volatile, and depend on hard to predict parameters, such as the changing policy of the OPEC which resembles a cartel.
Most international organizations (European Commission and IMF for instance), seems to use future prices.
Do you have any studies mentionning or better menchmarking oil prices forecast methods ?