Fueling Strategy: Please fill as needed tonight – Be Safe

NYMEX Crude $ 28.46 DN $.9600
NY Harbor ULSD $ .9087 DN $.0256
NYMEX Gasoline $1.0262 UP $.0050

NEWS
West Texas Intermediate oil prices fell on Tuesday, with front-month futures settling below $29 a barrel, as traders bet that Iran’s release from nuclear-related sanctions and the coming refinery maintenance season in the U.S. will worsen the glut of crude supplies.

Brent prices, however, rebounded as some traders feared that Monday’s decline to a fresh 12-year low was overdone. February West Texas Intermediate crude fell by 96 cents, or 3.3%, to settle at $28.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was the lowest settlement for a front-month contract since September 2003, according to Dow Jones. The February WTI contract expires WednesdayRegular trading for WTI was closed Monday for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Over the weekend, an agreement lifting sanctions on Iran was implemented—lifting limits on Iran’s ability to sell oil on the world market.

The Energy Information Administration expects Iran’s production to rise from an average of 2.8 million barrels a day in 2015. It forecast Iran’s output at 3.1 million barrels a day in 2016, and at almost 3.6 million barrels a day in 2017. WTI prices fell to as low as $28.23 on Monday in the wake of the news. Adding to price pressures were concerns that as U.S. refinery maintenance kicks in, demand for crude will slow and the market will see higher crude inventories, said Matt Smith, commodity analyst at ClipperData. However, on Tuesday, March Brent crude the global crude benchmark, rose 21 cents, or 0.7%, to $28.76 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. Brent had fallen Monday to its lowest level in 12 years as traders reacted to the lifting of sanctions on Iran. But some analysts said that Monday’s drop didn’t reflect a fundamental change and that Iranian crude should have been priced into the Brent contract months ago. “Market players were trading on headlines rather than fundamentals, which caused Brent to sell off yesterday,” according to Olivier Jakob, an analyst at Switzerland-based Petromatrix.

On Tuesday, a report released by the International Energy Agency forecast around 1 million barrels a day of excess supply in 2016. The IEA said economic slowdowns in China and Brazil also were likely to hit oil demand in 2016. China’s gross domestic product expanded by 6.9% year-over-year in 2015, down from the 7.3% gain reported in 2014, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Tuesday. Prices for March gasoline futures on Nymex, meanwhile, briefly bounced to as high as $1.077 a gallon before settling at $1.026, up just half a cent, or 0.5%. Gasoline traders may be “focusing on the expected seasonal decline in refinery production as more gasoline-making units come offline for scheduled maintenance,” said Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citi Futures and OTC Clearing.

Weekly petroleum-supply data from the EIA will be delayed to Thursday due to Monday’s holiday.