X

Market Close: July 22 Mixed

Fueling Strategy: Please fuel as needed today/tonight – Be Safe
NYMEX Crude    $ 56.22 UP $.5900
NYMEX ULSD     $1.8995 UP $.0099
NYMEX Gas       $1.8279 DN $.0126
NEWS
Oil prices rose more than 1% on Monday, as investors worried about possible supply disruptions in the energy-rich Middle East after Iran’s seizure of a British tanker last week. Brent Crude futures climbed 66 cents a barrel, or 1.02% to $63.11 a barrel. WTI crude futures settled up 1.1%, or 59 cents, at $56.22 per barrel. Capping gains, force majeure was lifted on loadings of crude at Libya’s Sharara oilfield, the country’s largest, whose closure since Friday had caused an output loss of about 290,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Last week, WTI fell over 7% and Brent lost more than 6%, weighed down by economic worries and the return of U.S. production in the Gulf of Mexico after a hurricane. “Some of the selling pressure from demand concerns seems to have evaporated this week,” said Gene McGillian, vice president of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. “The fears about geopolitics seem to have halted some of that selling pressure,” he said. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Friday they had captured a British-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf in response to Britain’s seizure of an Iranian tanker earlier this month.The move stoked fears of potential supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, through which flows about one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies, but no major escalation with Britain or the United States appears imminent. “In the cat and mouse game that Iran is playing with the U.S., it is taking calculated risks,” Harry Tchilinguirian, global oil strategist at BNP Paribas in London, told the Reuters Global Oil Forum. “So far the U.S. is not taking the bait.”

Last week, data showed shipments of crude from Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, fell to a 1-1/2-year low in May. Speculative money is flowing back into oil in response to the escalating dispute between Iran, the United States and other Western nations, along with signs of falling supply. In early May, new, tighter U.S. sanctions on Iran took effect. Hedge funds and other money managers raised their combined futures and options positions on U.S. crude for a second week and increased their positions in Brent crude as well, according to data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Intercontinental Exchange.

Goldman Sachs on Sunday lowered its forecast of growth in oil demand for 2019 to 1.275 million bpd, citing disappointing global economic activity.

Have a Great Day,
Loren R Bailey, President
Fuel Manager Services Inc.
Office: 479-846-2761
Cell: 479-790-5581
Categories: Fuel News
loren: Fuel Manager Services Inc. "Serving the trucking industry since 1992" I've been in and around the trucking industry for 45-years beginning in owner operator operations at Willis Shaw Express. I bought a small trucking company that I ran for 6-years then sold and went to work for J.B. Hunt Transport in 1982. After 10-years with Hunt, I started Fuel Manager Services, Inc., we are in our 29th year of serving the American trucking companies. Our simple goal was and is to bridge the gap between the trucking companies and the fuel suppliers.