Fueling Strategy: Please partial fill tonight, Saturday AM wholesale prices will fall another penny then Sunday AM look for another drop of 2 cents – Be Safe Today!

NYMEX Crude $ 40.36 DN $1.1400
NY Harbor ULSD $1.2322 DN $0.0221
NYMEX Gasoline $1.4612 DN $0.0444

NEWS
Oil futures settled lower on Friday, but still finished the week with a gain, as traders braced for a meeting between major producers, who are scheduled to discuss a potential production freeze this weekend to help boost prices and alleviate a glut of global crude supplies.

Prices briefly pared some of their earlier losses after Baker Hughes Inc. reported that the number of active U.S. oil rigs fell by 3 to 351 as of Friday. That was the fourth weekly decline in a row. May West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.14, or 2.8%, to settle at $40.36 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchang. Prices tallied a third straight session decline, but still tacked on about 1.6% for the week. June Brent crudeLCOM6, -1.85% the global oil benchmark, fell 74 cents, or 1.7%, to $43.10 a barrel, on London’s ICE Futures exchange, with prices roughly 2.7% higher on the week.

“While any agreement is unlikely to reshape the fundamentals of the oil market, Sunday’s outcome is likely to have a rather dramatic short-term impact on prices,” said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric. Both oil benchmarks were up in earlier trade but dropped by more than a percentage point after a report that Iran’s oil minister Bijan Zanganeh won’t attend the oil producers’ summit Sunday in Doha, Qatar.

More than a dozen major producers, including heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Russia, are set to discuss measures to limit production in a bid to support prices. Many analysts, however, are skeptical about the outcome of the talks. “Our expectations for the meeting are low. Although an agreement on production caps is likely to be reached, it will probably not include any concrete figures or obligations, let alone any sanctions to be imposed in the event of non-compliance,” analysts at Commerzbank said. “In other words, the meeting will do nothing to change the current situation on the oil market.” Jason Gammel, an analyst at Jefferies, said that if there is no agreement in Doha, there could be a snap back in prices given the high expectations ahead of the talks among investors. Oil prices have jumped by more than a third since the idea of limiting production at current levels was first floated in mid-February but the rally has stalled in recent weeks amid uncertainty about the outcome of the talks. Even if the meeting ends with a deal to freeze output, many analysts question whether it would be enough to alleviate the global glut of crude that has pressured prices for the past two years. On Friday, traders also digested news that China’s economy, the world’s second biggest oil consumer, slowed further in the beginning of the year.