Fueling Strategy: Please partial fill tonight, Saturday AM wholesale prices will drop one penny so please keep all tanks topped Saturday, Sunday AM wholesale prices will go back up 2.5 Cents – Be Safe

NYMEX Crude $ 46.59 UP $.5300
NY Harbor ULSD $1.4994 UP $.0246
NYMEX Gasoline $1.3991 UP $.0554

NEWS
Oil futures settled higher Friday to tally a monthly gain of more than 3% on growing expectations that crude production will soon decline. Oil-services firm Baker Hughes reported a weekly drop in the number of active rigs drilling for oil, but economic data raised worries about U.S. energy demand, limiting oil’s climb for the session.

December West Texas Intermediate crude settled at $46.59 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 53 cents, or 1.2%, for the day. Based on the most-active contracts, prices were up about 4.5% for the week. They added about 3.3% from the $45.09 settlement of the November contract a month ago. December Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange added 76 cents, or 1.6%, to finish at $49.56 a barrel. Prices rose about 2.5% from the front-month contract settlement of $48.37 at the end of September. Traders are “still responding mainly to changes in the supply and demand outlook,” said Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at CMC Markets. WTI futures rallied 6.3% on Wednesday, and “coincided with a second increase in a row in [Energy Department] implied demand,” he said. That helped offset losses seen earlier in the week, following news that the U.S. government will sell oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve starting in 2018.

The Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday a fifth straight weekly increase in crude supplies, but also said supplies of gasoline and distillates declined. There were also some solid indications this week that oil companies are taking a hit from low oil prices. “Despite the overwhelmingly bleak fundamental backdrop” of oversupply, many traders are “starting to price oil on future fundamentals,” such as a likely tightening of supplies by 2017, Matthew Parry, senior oil analyst at the International Energy Agency, told MarketWatch.

Baker Hughes reported that the number of active U.S. oil rigs fell by 16 to 578. The total U.S. rig count also fell by 12 to 775. Oil traders have also looked to the latest U.S. economic data for hints on the outlook for energy demand. The U.S. economy grew at a 1.5% seasonally adjusted annual rate from July through September, the Commerce Department said Thursday, marking a slowdown from the previous quarter. Consumer sentiment rose in October, but not as much as the preliminary figure suggested.

Meanwhile, production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries declined to 31.64 million barrels a day in October, from a revised 31.76 million barrels a day in September, according to a survey conducted by Reuters released Friday. As for prices, a Wall Street Journal poll of 13 investment banks shows that the market expects prices to plunge further next year. Brent prices will average $58 a barrel, and WTI will average $54 a barrel next year, the poll indicates.