Fueling Strategy: Please partial fill only tonight, Friday AM wholesale prices will drop 6.5 cents – Please have all tanks completely full before Friday at midnight, Saturday AM wholesale prices will jump back UP 5.5 cents – Be Safe Tonight!!
NYMEX Crude $ 41.08 UP $1.1400
NY Harbor ULSD $1.3586 UP $0.0537
NYMEX Gasoline $1.2963 UP $0.0032
NEWS
Oil futures rallied on Thursday, as talk of a possible cut in production from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and weakness in the U.S. dollar helped crude recoup nearly 3% of a decline that took the U.S. benchmark below $40 a barrel.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, January West Texas Intermediate crude tacked on $1.14, or 2.9%, to settle at $41.08 a barrel. January Brent crude LCOF6, +3.79% rose $1.35, or 3.2%, to $43.84 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. “The trading market is diving into some price arbitrage…after a tough, almost oversold week,” said Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Seaport Global Securities. WTI oil prices lost 4.6% on Wednesday to settle below $40 a barrel for the first time since August after the U.S. reported a 10th straight weekly increase in crude stockpiles, while Brent prices finished near a 7-year low.
Some of Thursday’s climb “appears to be technical, with some trading action probably associated with speculation to the upside” if wording in OPEC’s statement after Friday’s meeting “points to a tighter supply story in 2016,” Hastings said. But the bigger trend remains firmly in place for oil, “with increasing chances for a prolonged visit to the high $30s in WTI crude.”
A short squeeze in the euro after the European Central Bank delivered a smaller-than-expected expansion of its stimulus program may have also spurred some short covering in oil as the U.S. dollar weakened. “Crude oil has a very long history of being traded using forex…so this would be a partial explanation to the action on Thursday for sure,” Hastings said.
News reports Thursday said that Saudi Arabia, the oil cartel’s most influential member, was willing to propose that Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ cut production by 1 million barrels a day next year, but only if fellow OPEC member Iran, as well as non-OPEC producers, trim their output. But if Iran cut its production, it would be “essentially forgoing the chief benefit of Iran’s nuclear agreement with world powers,” said Tim Evans, energy futures specialist at Citi Futures. “Even Saudi Arabian sources said the report of such an offer was ‘baseless’,” he said, and “so the market was back to square one, with OPEC unlikely to cut output at Friday’s summit.” Meanwhile, James Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics said that “if the Saudis say they will do something that depends on Russian cooperation, they have not said anything.” “I see it as a strong indicator of no policy change by the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] members,” he said.
Iran on Thursday said it would move forward with plans to boost its oil output. “We don’t accept any discussion” over Tehran’s decision to increase production after sanctions are lifted, Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told reporters in Vienna. OPEC’s meeting on Friday comes a little more than a year after it embarked on a policy of keeping output high in a bid to squeeze out other producers and gain market share.