(Ecofin Agency) - Vitol Group, the world’s leading oil trader, forecast that oil prices will remain low for the next decade due to the slowing Chinese economy and the U.S shale industry’s boost.

“It’s hard to see a dramatic price increase,” Vitol Group BV CEO Ian Taylor told Bloomberg in an interview on January 8th.

Taylor whose group trade more than 5.5 million barrels of crude and refined oil per day, enough to meet the needs of Germany, France and Spain combined added that average price for barrel of oil over the next decade should be around $50. “We really do imagine a band, and that band would probably see a $40 to $60 type of band. I can see that band lasting for five years to ten years,” he said.

The lower limit of this range implies a slight increase in the current price which floats around $35 barrel whereas the upper limit corresponds to the commodity’s level in July 2015.

Forecasts of Vitol, highly viewed in the oil industry, could mean that oil producers and oil-trading companies will be facing the longest period of lows for oil price since the 1986-1999 period where the price of oil fluctuated between $10 and $20 a barrel.

The executive who started his career at Royal Dutch Shell Plc in the late 1970s said he didn’t know if prices had already hit bottom, as supply keeps exceeding demand. He however said these prices could slightly increase during the second semester of 2016 reaching $45 to $50 per barrel.

For a foreseeable future, Vitol’s CEO doubts that oil market will ever again see previous triple-digit prices that flattened sovereign wealth funds of Middle East countries and propelled the valuations of major oil companies to levels never seen before. “You have to believe that there is a possibility that you will not necessarily go back above $100, you know, ever,” he said.

He believes that major hindrances to a substantial surge in global oil price are oversupply, growing energy efficiency, Iran’s return on the market and the slowing growth in emerging markets.