In a new report on Monday, JPMorgan (JPM) warned clients that Brent crude oil will hit $125 a barrel next year and $150 in 2023, in large part because OPEC doesn't have nearly as much firepower to respond to high prices as many assume.

"They don't have the barrels.

If that forecast proves accurate, it would likely translate to national gas prices topping $5 a gallon and surely exacerbate inflationary pressures hitting the US economy and squeezing American families.

The central problem, Malek said, is that while OPEC nations have plenty of oil in the ground, they don't have the capital and logistics to deliver it quickly.

OPEC's real spare capacity, a closely watched metric that measures the amount of barrels that can swiftly be added to the market, stands at just 2 million barrels per day next year, JPMorgan estimates.

They didn't allocate as much into spare capacity," Malek said.

That's why Malek wrote that OPEC will "struggle" to grow its output next year, even if it pauses production hikes in the beginning of 2022.

Secondly, Wall Street investors have demanded oil companies stop spending all their cash flows on expensive drilling projects.

Now we do," Malek said.

Calls for $200 oil were wrong back in 2008

Of course, JPMorgan's call for $150 oil is a bit of an outlier.

The Energy Information Administration expects Brent crude to slide to an annual average of $72 a barrel next year as production grows from OPEC+, US shale and other non-OPEC countries.