Fueling Strategy: Please fill as needed tonight, Wholesale prices are down 5 cents – Be Safe Today

NYMEX Crude $ 45.83 UP $.1900
NY Harbor ULSD $1.4312 UP $.0089
NYMEX Gasoline $1.5017 UP $.0098

NEWS
Oil bounced back Friday after suffering back-to-back declines, but registered a third-straight weekly loss as an unexpected climb in U.S. crude supplies cast a shadow on efforts to cut global supplies.

Another weekly rise in the number of active U.S. oil rigs, which have climbed each week for more than five months, fed concerns of further gains in production—keeping U.S. prices capped below $46 a barrel. July West Texas Intermediate crude rose 19 cents, or 0.4%, to settle at $45.83 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. August Brent crude added 29 cents, or 0.6%, to $48.15 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.

Still, prices saw “a bit of buying interest [Friday] as we retest the early-May lows, but WTI could test the $43 support level before we see a significant reversal,” said Troy Vincent, oil analyst at ClipperData. “With global floating storage and export loadings holding up as North and West African production rebounds, there is little data to direct prices out of this bearish trend.” For the week, WTI lost 3.8%, while Brent fell 3.6%. Both have now posted losses three weeks in a row.

“The fact that U.S. oil production has risen nearly [600,000 barrels a day] so far in 2017 remains a substantial underlying headwind on prices, as the output gains are offsetting roughly half of OPEC’s pledged cuts” of 1.2 million barrels, said Tyler Richey, co-editor for the Sevens Report. “On top of that, increasing doubts about the efficacy,” in its current form, of the production-cut agreement between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and some major non-OPEC producers, “are weighing heavily on prices, and the path of least resistance is still lower medium term,” he said in his latest report.

Oil prices fell sharply Wednesday when the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a surprise increase in weekly crude stocks—the first in nine weeks. The data also revealed increases in gasoline and heating oil supplies, along with weak demand for petroleum-product inventories, although crude production in the lower 48 states posted its first weekly decline of the year.

Have a great day,

Loren R. Bailey, Founder & Owner
FUEL MANAGER SERVICES INC
“Serving the Trucking Industry Since 1992”