It's been a pretty painful day for ASX 200 energy shares so far this Wednesday, including the Woodside Energy Group Ltd (ASX: WDS) share price. While the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is in the red today, having lost 0.43% at the time of writing, energy shares like Woodside have been smashed.
Woodside shares are presently down a nasty 5.55% at $30.64 each after the energy giant closed at $32.44 a share yesterday. Earlier this morning, the Woodside share price dropped as low as $30.51, which represented a loss of almost 6% at the time.
ASX 200 energy shares feel the pain today
Woodside isn't the only ASX 200 energy share feeling the pain today either. Beach Energy Ltd (ASX: BPT) shares have lost 7.03% so far at $1.627 each. Santos Ltd (ASX: STO) shares have also had a shocker, losing around 4.55% at $7.14 a share.
As my Fool colleague James covered this morning, today's oil shares selloff appears to have been sparked by a dramatic collapse in the price of crude oil. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil fell more than 10% in last night's trading, and dropped below US$100 per barrel for the first time in over two months.
So Woodside has just come off a very pleasing month for the oil producer. Although the ASX 200 index fell by 8.9% over June, Woodside shares rose 7% higher over the month. But after today's drop, what might July hold in store for Woodside shares?
What's next for the Woodside Energy share price?
Well, it's all but impossible to accurately predict what a share might do over one day, let alone one month. But what we do know is that the Woodside share price is highly likely to mirror what the price of crude oil itself is doing, as we see playing out today.
So if oil bounces back from the recent slump we've seen, investors can expect good things from the Woodside share price. However, the opposite is also true, and if we see continued weakness in oil pricing, there's little doubt Woodside shares will also struggle.
ASX brokers don't usually do one-month predictions, but we can look at the prevailing opinion for Woodside shares over the next year.
One ASX broker who remains bullish is Morgans. As we covered late last month, Morgans currently has an "overweight" rate on Woodside shares, complete with a 12-month share price target of $40. If that came to pass, it would mean close to a 30% upside from its current price.
Although Morgans is wary of a recession, it also is anticipating that "structural tailwinds and [Woodside's] attractive valuation would offset any weakness in oil prices", even if one was to occur.
So it's hard to know where Woodside shares will be at the end of July. But Morgans certainly thinks it will be a lot higher by July 2023. As always though, we shall have to wait and see what happens.
In the meantime, the current Woodside share price gives this ASX 200 energy share a market capitalisation of $58.6 billion, with a dividend yield of 6.06%.
