Fueling Strategy: Please fill as needed tonight, Saturday AM wholesale prices will drop slightly, Sunday AM look for wholesale prices to remain flat to unchanged – Be Safe Today!

NYMEX Crude $ 34.73 DN $.2200
NY Harbor ULSD $1.1071 UP $.0018
NYMEX Gasoline $1.2746 UP $.0130

NEWS
Oil futures settled lower on Friday after data revealed a climb in the number of active U.S. oil rigs for the first time in five weeks.

Prices, which held ground at their lowest settlement since February 2009, also marked a loss for the week on the back of a growing glut of U.S. supplies and worries over weaker energy demand in the face of a warmer winter. January West Texas Intermediate crude fell 22 cents, or 0.6%, to settle at $34.73 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Based on the contract’s settlement of $35.62 last Friday, prices were down about 2.5% for the week. The contract expires on Monday. February crude the most-active WTI futures contract, settled at $36.06. February Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange lost 18 cents, or 0.5%, to $36.88 a barrel. Prices declined 2.8% on the week, from the January Brent front-month contract close of $37.93 last Friday. The February contract was down about 3.8% for the week.

Data from Baker Hughes [s: bhi] Friday showed the number of active U.S. oil-drilling rigs climbed by 17 to 541 as of Friday. The increase followed four weeks of declines in the number of active oil rigs. The total active U.S. rig count, which includes natural-gas rigs, was unchanged at 709. Tariq Zahir, managing member of Tyche Capital Advisors, said he was “shocked” by the increase in the oil-rig count. Oil companies “have been able to get their costs down to very low levels,” he said. Even though the number of active rigs have come down substantially over the past year, “production has not come off in a meaningful way at all.” For now, “we are waiting to sell any rally we see,” he said.

Earlier, Zahir had mentioned that light trading volume as the market heads toward the Christmas holiday and end of the year could be a recipe for big swings in crude prices “in weird directions.” A combination of traders unwinding bets that oil will fall at the end of the year and investors shedding oil for tax reasons contribute to the volatility, he said. On Thursday, prices slid as supply-glut concerns intensified. Data provider Genscape Inc. said stockpiles at Cushing, Okla., the delivery point for the benchmark U.S. futures contract, rose by nearly 1.4 million barrels in the week that ended Tuesday. The U.S. Energy Department Wednesday reported an unexpected 4.8 million-barrel increase in U.S. crude stockpiles in the week that ended Dec 11.

Meanwhile, warmer-than-usual winter weather this year has dampened energy demand, widening room for inventories to grow even more.