Fueling Strategy: Please top all tanks tonight before 23:00 CST refill, Friday AM wholesale prices will jump UP 6 cents – Be Safe Today!
NYMEX Crude $ 46.06 UP $.1200
NY Harbor ULSD $1.4748 DN $.0091
NYMEX Gasoline $1.3496 DN $.0005
NEWS
Oil prices edged higher to settle above $46 a barrel on Thursday, extending the more-than-6% rally they saw a day earlier, as bets on a slowdown in production grow. Natural-gas prices, meanwhile, ended lower as supplies moved closer to a record level. December West Texas Intermediate crude tacked on 12 cents by the close, or 0.3%, to settle at a more-than-one-week high of $46.06 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices jumped 6.3% on Wednesday, as a rise in crude stockpiles wasn’t quite as large as some expected and supplies of gasoline fell.
December Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell 25 cents, or 0.5%, to $48.80 a barrel, trading well above the session’s low of $48.17. “It could be that oil is finally responding to the general improvement in risk sentiment and could be about to embark on a significant rally,” said Fawad Razaqzada, chief technical analyst at Forex.com. “After all, most of the bad news is surely now priced in while the growth in supply may have peaked.”
Indeed, there are signs that oil output is set to slow. Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday said it swung to a third-quarter loss after taking write-downs on projects amid a 16-month slump in oil prices. Earlier this week, BP PLC outlined plans to cut costs. “The cancellations of major projects by oil companies … suggests oil production is being scaled back and point to higher prices in the long run,” said Razaqzada. “But in the immediate term, the oil market remains excessively oversupplied and this is keeping price gains in check, though that’s not to say we won’t see big surges every now and again” like the one seen Wednesday.
Fear of a possible interest-rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve at the December meeting limited gains for oil on Thursday. An increase in U.S. interest rates would push up the greenback, which would make crude and oil products more expensive for traders holding a different currency. But data Thursday showed gross domestic product rose at a 1.5% annual pace from July to September, much slower than the 3.9% rate seen in the second quarter. That prompted a decline in the U.S. ICE Dollar Index and offered some support for oil.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said the nation’s crude stockpile grew by 3.4 million barrels in the week ended Oct. 23, less than the estimate of a 4.1 million-barrel addition by the industry group American Petroleum Institute. Refinery utilization also rose to 87.6% from 86.4%. “This could be the first indication that seasonal [refinery] maintenance has peaked,” said Stuart Ive, the client manager at OM Financial. That implies more crude demand from refineries.
On Nymex Thursday, November gasoline ended nearly flat at $1.35 a gallon, while November heating oil lost almost a cent to $1.475 a gallon. Both had rallied by more than 4% Wednesday. The November contracts expire Friday. Also on Nymex, natural gas turned lower by the close. The EIA reported Thursday that supplies of natural gas rose by a less-than-expected 63 billion cubic feet for the week ended Oct. 23 to stand at 3.877 trillion cubic feet. Still, supplies are set to blast through the record level of 3.929 trillion cubic feet, said Matt Smith, commodity analyst at Clipper Data. The record was reached in November of 2012, according to EIA data. December natural gas shed 4.1 cents, or 1.8%, to $2.257 per million British thermal units on its first full day as a front-month contract.