Fueling Strategy: Please fill as needed tonight, Wednesday AM wholesale prices will go up slightly – Be Safe Today!

NYMEX Crude $ 41.08 UP $1.3000
NY Harbor ULSD $1.2632 UP $0.0273
NYMEX Gasoline $1.4799 UP $0.0434

NEWS
Oil futures snapped a four-day losing streak Tuesday, as a strike by oil workers in Kuwait and production outages in other parts of the world renewed hopes for a smaller global glut of crude supplies.

Meanwhile, natural-gas futures jumped nearly 8%, buoyed by weather-related demand for the fuel. May West Texas Intermediate crude rose $1.30, or 3.3%, to settle at $41.08 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while June Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $1.12, or 2.6%, to $44.03 a barrel. Kuwaiti oil workers remained on strike a third day to protest proposals to cut wages and benefits for all public-sector employees. “There is no sign [of] when we will have a resolution for this,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at AvaTrade. “This is supporting the price of oil.” Aslam pointed out that news reports said that some of Kuwait’s crude production has come back on line, with output at 1.5 million barrels a day. The country had pegged production at about 1.1 million barrels a day on Sunday and Monday, down from the nearly 3 million barrels a day it normally produces. Chronic outages in Yemen, South Sudan and Iraq and major pipeline outages in Nigeria have also substantially curtailed global production in recent weeks, according to BMI Research.

Prices fell Monday after a deal that would have limited future crude production between major Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries members and non-OPEC countries was thwarted at the last minute on Sunday by Saudi Arabia’s refusal to join the pact without Iran’s commitment to do the same. “The war between Iran and Saudi Arabia is for real and they are not going to back off,” said Aslam. The Saudis have even “warned that they can inflate their production by a million barrels a day without much hassle.” Market experts say OPEC’s biannual June 2 meeting is unlikely to yield a production cap agreement as member countries will act on their own self-interest and continue to pump at high rates to defend market shares. ING’s head of commodity strategy Hamza Khan predicts a failure to reach a production cap agreement in the June meeting could push prices back to $30 a barrel.

Traders will be watching U.S. crude inventories and production data for cues on global supply. The American Petroleum Institute issues its weekly supply data late Tuesday, while the Energy Information Administration’s report comes out Wednesday morning. A survey of analysts conducted by Platts shows estimates for a 1.6-million barrel increase in crude stocks, while gasoline stocks likely fell by 1.5 million barrels in the week ended April 15.

“With warmer weather affecting much of the U.S., the prospect of increased cooling demand has propelled much of the move higher for prices over the last two days,” said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric.