Fueling Strategy: Please partial fill only tonight, Saturday AM wholesale prices will drop 3 cents – Be Safe

Note: Oklahoma, Arkansas and SW Missouri will be under flood warnings all weekend – Here in NW Arkansas we’re expecting over 10 inches of rain so please alert the drivers to be careful.

NYMEX Crude $ 49.33 UP $.3600
NY Harbor ULSD $1.5040 DN $.0032
NYMEX Gasoline $1.5480 DN $.0020

NEWS
Oil prices settled a bit higher Friday, on the heels of a fresh slide to one-month settlement lows, but still registered a second straight monthly decline.

June West Texas Intermediate crude rose 36 cents, or 0.7%, to close at $49.33 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices, based on the front-month May contract finish at the end of March, have lost about 2.5% in April. The June contract itself has fallen by 3.4% from its settlement a month ago.

June Brent on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose 29 cents, or 0.6%, to $51.73 a barrel, on the contract’s expiration day. The contract ended about 3.4% lower for the month.

“Oil prices slipped to finish the month as investors became concerned [the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] may not extend their production cuts into the second half of 2017,” said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

OPEC will decide on May 25 whether to extend current production caps and that is the “single most important driver of oil prices in May,” said Tamar Essner, director of energy and utilities at Nasdaq Advisory Services.

“There is skepticism that extension of the cuts at current levels would be enough to move global inventories to more normalized levels, but the bar for increasing the level of cuts could be more difficult,” she said.

Oil prices have stalled since amid rebounding U.S. oil output.

“U.S. oil inventories remain strong, and U.S. production and oil-rig counts continue to climb, adding to oil market headwinds,” said Haworth. Prices are “likely to remain under pressure due to rising U.S. production in investment spending into the last half of 2017.”

On Friday, data from Baker Hughes showed a rise in active U.S. oil rigs for a 15th week in a row, implying that further gains in domestic production are ahead.

However, Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group, pointed out that the market is “not taking seriously the risks of underinvestment in the sector.

“We underinvest and think we will have enough supply and we always get caught,” he said.