Are prices of oil futures a reasonable way to have an idea of future oil price movement?

I want to have an informed guess for future oil price movements for an assignment...is it a good benchmark to look at the oil futures price being traded in the market to have an estimate.|||The future price is really just today's price plus the cost of the capital. Look at global economic recovery which will, which is, pushing oil price up.|||No. The futures price is normally equal to the cash price plus storage and financing costs. During shortages, this can reverse in that the futures price may be lower than the cash price.|||Futures price reflects expectation of the future price expectation of a commodity at the present time. By looking at the futures price and see if it is in contango or backwardation, you could have an idea of how investors are thinking about future prices now. But, thats only the view of investors about the future at this point in time. This opinion can change daily as well. Contango can change as easily to backwardation and vice versa. As such, looking at futures prices is no foolproof way of predicting the market either.