Fueling Strategy: Please top all tanks tonight before 23:00 CST, Friday AM wholesale prices will jump UP 7 cents – Be Safe!

NYMEX Crude $ 43.18 DN $1.0000
NY Harbor ULSD $1.2998 DN $0.0324
NYMEX Gasoline $1.5159 UP $0.0091

NEWS
Oil futures finished lower Thursday, pulling back after posting healthy gains over the past two sessions and reaching their highest levels of the year. Traders weighed mixed fundamental influences for the market, with support from separate data showing China’s oil imports jumped last month and U.S. crude production fell last week, but weekly U.S. crude stockpiles continued to increase.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, June West Texas Intermediate crude on its first full trading day as a front-month contract, fell by $1, or 2.3%, to settle at $43.18 a barrel. Prices for the contract gained more than 7% over the last two trading sessions to settle Wednesday at their best level of the year. Brent crude declined $1.27, or 2.8%, to $44.53 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. “We’re seeing a lot of volatility in oil prices right now,” said Nico Pantelis, head of research at Secular Investor. “Traders seem to realize that despite all the talks on production freezes, there are still clear risks to the oil price.”

China’s crude imports in March were the second-highest on record—up 21.6% from a year earlier to around 7.7 million barrels a day, due in part to strong demand from government stockpiling. The rise helped to allay fears that demand from the world’s second-biggest oil consumer is slowing. But “an uptick in imports does not necessarily translate to heightened demand, as a large portion of the imports can be attributed to the Chinese government building their strategic reserves,” said Joseph George, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric, in a note.

In the U.S., data Wednesday showed that stockpiles of crude increased last week by 2.1 million barrels and continued to hover near record highs. However, the Energy Information Administration also said U.S. production of crude fell for the sixth straight week to 8.95 million barrels. Last April, U.S. output peaked at 9.7 million barrels a day. “Low oil prices have started to put a brake on non-OPEC producers, U.S. [shale] oil in particular,” Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, said in a speech Thursday.

Signs of declining production have stoked a more upbeat sentiment in recent weeks. Prices edged higher, even after members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers failed to clinch an output freeze agreement at talks in Doha on Sunday, buoyed in large part by a three-day oil-worker strike in Kuwait. “Overall, the lack of a cohesive, deal of any kind in and out of OPEC, continues to put a lid on just how far prices can rally,” said Kevin Kerr, managing editor and executive publisher of Commodities Watch. “If for some reason a deal is announced, even before the [OPEC] meeting in June, that could lift the cap on crude prices,” he said. “If and until we do see some kind of agreed-upon true output cut though, prices will stay more or less tied to this range.”