Fueling Strategy: Please fill as needed tonight, Thursday AM wholesale prices will go up slightly – Be Safe!
NYMEX Crude $ 34.66 UP $.2600
NY Harbor ULSD $1.1065 UP $.0070
NYMEX Gasoline $1.3107 UP $.0072
NEWS
Oil futures finished higher on Wednesday, rising for a third straight session, as weekly data from the U.S. government revealed a fall in weekly domestic crude output. The crude report raised expectations that further production declines will help ease the market’s surplus of inventories. Meanwhile, natural-gas futures, which has been on a relatively steady decline all year on weak demand, logged their lowest settlement in about 17 years.
Total crude production in the latest week slipped by 25,000 barrels to stand at 9.077 million barrels a day, according to EIA data. A hefty weekly increase in U.S. oil supplies, however, kept a cap on price gains. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday a 10.4 million-barrel climb in crude-oil supplies for the week ended Feb. 26. That was above the 9.9 million-barrel increase reported by the American Petroleum Institute, and higher than the rise of 2.5 million barrels expected by analysts polled by Platts. “The fundamentals remain poor, but sentiment is a bit more focused upon the future, for now,” said Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Seaport Global Securities.
April West Texas Intermediate crude rose 26 cents, or 0.8%, to settle at $34.66 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, holding ground at their highest level in about two months. They were trading around $34.30 ahead the supply data and dropped to as low as $33.63 after them, before climbing back up again. Brent crude the global oil benchmark, added 12 cents, or 0.3% to $36.93 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange.
Oil’s price move “looks like a classic case of sell-the-rumour, buy-the-news type of a reaction,” said Fawad Razaqzada, technical analyst at Forex.com and City Index. A supply build “of this magnitude was already reported by the API last night and we are in a ‘risk on’ environment right now.” The U.S. market is still in the midst of its refinery maintenance season, weakening demand for crude oil that is refined into products such as gasoline. That is why the market can see larger builds in inventories this time of year, explained John Macaluso, an analyst at Tyche Capital Advisors. Given that, he expects WTI oil prices to see “another swing under $30 one more time by end of the month.”
But oil prices have been supported in recent weeks by hopes that major suppliers would curtail their output in a bid to raise prices. Prices rose to two-month high Tuesday after Russia’s energy minister said a “critical mass” of oil-producing countries—which together produce around 73% of the world’s oil—had agreed to hold output at January levels.
The pact, however, is conditional on the participation of other oil producers. Iran has confirmed that it won’t join and will continue to pump until its production returns to about 4 million barrels a day. “It looks like more of the trading sentiment is switching to how things shake out in about six months,” said Hastings. But oil “could also face its own unraveling if conditions don’t turn better in a few months. The pathway ahead is interesting, but not exactly clear.” Back on Nymex, prices for petroleum products ended with slight gains. Gasoline supplies fell by 1.5 million barrels, while distillate stockpiles climbed by 2.9 million barrels last week, the EIA said. Analysts polled by Platts were looking for declines of 750,000 barrels for gasoline stocks and 833,000 barrels for distillates, which include heating oil.