Fueling Strategy: Please keep tanks topped, tonight before 23:00 CST re-top all tanks, Thursday AM wholesale prices will jump UP 6 cents – Be Safe Today!

NYMEX Crude $ 41.76 DN $.4100
NY Harbor ULSD $1.2656 DN $.0103
NYMEX Gasoline $1.5295 DN $.0048

NEWS
Oil futures settled with a loss on Wednesday, putting an end to three sessions of gains as weekly data showed a hefty jump in U.S. crude supplies.

But prices finished off the session’s lows, finding support from declines in domestic oil output and gasoline stockpiles. Traders also weighed expectations for a production freeze at Sunday’s meeting among key global oil producers in Doha, Qatar. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, May West Texas Intermediate crude settled at $41.76 a barrel, down 41 cents, or 1%. It was trading lower at around $41.65 right before the supply data. June Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell 51 cents, or 1.1%, to $44.18 a barrel.

Oil held up well “considering the big increase in crude supply,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group. “A couple of months ago, a big crude build like this would have buried the market, but now the possibility of a production freeze and strong economic data in China is giving the market the sense that we are going to get back in balance.”

Early Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a 6.6 million-barrel climb in crude-oil supplies for the week ended April 8. That topped the 6.2 million-barrel increase reported by the American Petroleum Institute, and was more than six times higher than the climb of 1 million barrels expected by analysts polled by Platts. But the data also revealed that domestic oil production fell to 8.977 million barrels a day, down 31,000 from a week earlier. Gasoline supplies also dropped 4.2 million barrels. Analysts surveyed by Platts were looking for a smaller 1.9 million-barrel fall. The decline comes as motor-gasoline product supplied, which offers a measure of demand, rose 5.7% to 9.4 million barrels a day over the last four weeks, according to the EIA. “The market took notice that U.S. crude production fell below 9 million barrels,” said Flynn. “On top of that, gas demand is rip-roaring.” Distillate stockpiles, which include heating oil, rose by 500,000 barrels last week.

On Nymex, May gasoline fell half a cent to $1.53 a gallon. May heating oil lost 1 cent, or 0.8%, to $1.266 a gallon. May natural gas ended at $2.036 per million British thermal units, up 3.2 cents, or 1.6%, ahead of the market’s supply update Thursday. Oil futures had rallied Tuesday to the highest settlement of the year on speculation that Saudi Arabia and Russia have reached a deal to stabilize production.

But comments on Wednesday from Saudi Arabia Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi played down the prospect of oil producers taking action on crude output at the coming meeting. When asked about such action, al-Naimi reportedly said, “Forget about this topic.” “OPEC production increased in March, which begs the question [of] where the bullish sentiment is coming from,” said John Macaluso, an analyst at Tyche Capital Advisors. “A cap of production at record highs seems more like a Band-Aid than a long term answer to a global supply issue.”

Meanwhile, OPEC’s monthly report Wednesday highlighted upcoming support for the oil market “from gasoline demand ahead of the driving season.” It also said global oil production outside of the cartel is falling more sharply than expected.