Fueling Strategy: Please top all tanks before 23:00 CST tonight, Thursday AM wholesale prices will go UP 3 cents – Be Safe Today!

NYMEX Crude $ 32.30 UP $0.8500
NY Harbor ULSD $1.0252 UP $0.0575
NYMEX Gasoline $1.0457 DN $0.0015

NEWS
Oil futures settled at a more than two-week high on Wednesday, buoyed by growing expectations that major oil producers may come to an agreement on output cuts, as U.S. government data showed a dip in domestic crude production.

March West Texas Intermediate crude rose 85 cents, or 2.7%, to $32.33 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was the highest settlement for a most-active contract since Jan. 8. Prices were trading around $30.69 before the release of the production data. March Brent crude the global oil benchmark, jumped $1.30, or 4.1%, to $33.10 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange.

Gains accelerated after Reuters reported that the head of Russia’s state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft said Russian officials have decided that they should take to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries about oil output cuts. WTI prices had climbed 4% on Tuesday, buoyed by talk of potential cooperation among oil producers, but many analysts are skeptical of any agreement to cut output.

Ahead of oil’s price settlement Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve expressed less eagerness to raise interest rates. The statement wasn’t hawkish enough to spur a rally in the dollar“the near-term outlook for oil futures remains neutral as the recent sell off continues to be consolidated,” said Tyler Richey, co-editor of The 7:00’s Report. “But the risk of a further short-squeeze rally remains fairly high into the end of this week.”

U.S. oil output falls, supply climbs
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday that domestic oil production inched lower by 14,000 barrels a day to total 9.22 million barrels a day for the week ended Jan. 22. Output had peaked at 9.7 million barrels a day last April, has remained stable at around 9.2 million barrels a day in recent months. The 14,000-barrel output decline is “definitely not much,” said Richey, “but it’s all about the trend.” In the last two weeks, “the trend of increasing production is starting to moderate, which again, isn’t outright bullish yet, given the ongoing global production surplus, but it is at least ‘less bearish’,” he said. Longer term, “we are going to need to see much more substantial weekly production declines and a decisive trend of lower U.S. output develop for the fundamentals to begin to get more bullish,” Richey said.

he EIA also said crude inventories climbed by 8.4 million barrels last week. That was more than the 3.5 million-barrel rise expected by analysts surveyed by Platts, but it was smaller than the increase of 11.4 million barrels reported Tuesday by industry group the American Petroleum Institute. Gasoline supplies rose by 3.5 million barrels, while distillate stockpiles fell by 4.1 million barrels last week, according to the EIA. The Platts survey showed expectations for a rise of 1 million for gasoline and a decline of 2 million for distillates, which include heating oil.