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NYMEX Crude $ 41.45 DN $.0700
NY Harbor ULSD $1.2521 UP $.0147
NYMEX Gasoline $1.4971 UP $.0382

NEWS
Oil futures staged a comeback on Tuesday, paring most of their losses by the settlement as the market turned much of their attention away from the terror attacks in Belgium.

Oil found some support from expectations that data may show a decline in U.S. crude production and that major oil producers will make a decision next month that may help slow global output. On its first full trading day as a front-month contract, May West Texas Intermediate crude shed 7 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $41.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading as low as $40.77. May Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange tacked on 25 cents, or 0.6%, lower at $41.789 a barrel.

Two loud explosions shook Brussels Airport early Tuesday and a separate blast rocked Maalbeek station on the Brussels metro, with reports of more than two dozen fatalities. “As far as oil goes, this should be a nonevent,” said James Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics. Belgium does not produce crude and its three refineries are unlikely to be affected, he said. Even so, following the tragic events, “risk aversion and relative U.S. dollar strength” weighed on oil prices, said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric.

European equities ended mostly down, while the ICE U.S. dollar index edged up by 0.5%. The terror attacks could hurt demand for oil products, said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group. “If people become fearful of travel, we could see a reduction in jet fuel demand,” he said. And even more broadly, “fear could actually hurt economic growth.”

But traders were also looking to the American Petroleum Institute’s weekly report on petroleum supplies due out late Tuesday and the Energy Information Administration’s supply data Wednesday. Analysts polled by Platts expect to see an increase of 2.7 million barrels in crude stockpiles for the week ended March 18. A weekly rise would be the sixth in a row for the EIA data. The EIA report will also offer an update on total domestic production, which showed a fall in the previous report. “If we don’t see declines in U.S. production resume this week, the fundamental backdrop for the oil market will turn further bearish despite futures largely holding recent gains,” said Richey. The Platts analysts also forecast declines of 1.3 million for gasoline inventories and 1.7 million for distillates, which include heating oil.

WTI oil managed to tally a fifth weekly rise last week on hopes that an April 17 meeting in Doha, Qatar, between major oil producers could lead to curbed production and higher prices. The meeting is “only about not increasing production and, with the exception of Saudi Arabia and the restoration of some production outages due to pipeline problems in Nigeria and Iraq, there is no spare capacity so all the meeting can do is leave production the same,” said WTRG’s Williams.

Besides that, Iran and Libya, who have outages due to sanctions and civil war, respectively, reportedly won’t attend the meeting, he said. “Both of them hope to return to previous production levels.”