Fueling Strategy: Please continue partial filling tonight, Thursday AM wholesale prices will fall 2.5 cents – Be Safe Today!
NYMEX Crude $ 38.32 UP $.0400
NY Harbor ULSD $1.1597 UP $.0042
NYMEX Gasoline $1.4364 DN $.0174
NEWS
Oil futures barely managed to put an end to a five session losing streak on Wednesday, as traders weighed support from a fall in weekly U.S. crude production against pressure from a rise in stockpiles. Crude supplies marked a seventh weekly climb, but the increase came in below some market expectations.
West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery tacked on 4 cents, or 0.1%, to settle at $38.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after settling at a two-week low on Tuesday. Prices lost nearly 8% over the previous five trading sessions. May Brent crude rose 12 cents, or 0.3%, to $39.26 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange.
Early Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a 2.3 million-barrel rise in crude-oil supplies to 534.8 million barrels for the week ended March 25. Stockpiles marked a seventh straight weekly climb. But that was below the 2.6 million-barrel increase reported by the American Petroleum Institute and close to an increase of 2 million barrels expected by analysts polled by Platts. Analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected an even larger, 3.5 million-barrel rise. With the supply rise coming in below some expectations, WTI prices rallied to as high as $39.79 a barrel immediately after the report, before paring gains. “While on the surface the inventory numbers are portrayed as bullish, a build is a build and the pile on party continues for [a]…continuous supply issue and momentum in the market is still negative,” said John Macaluso, an analyst at Tyche Capital Advisors. Total domestic oil production fell by 16,000 barrels a day to 9.022 million barrels a day, EIA data showed. That’s down from a peak of 9.7 million barrels a day last April.
Production has now posted declines in nine out of the last 10 weeks, said Tyler Richey, co-editor of The 7:00’s Report. “Continued declines in production are bullish in theory, [but] the slower pace of those declines in March vs. February is modestly disappointing to the fundamental energy bulls out there,” he said.
Gasoline supplies fell by 2.5 million barrels, while distillate stockpiles edged down by 1.1 million barrels last week, according to the EIA. Platts’s survey showed forecasts for declines of 2.1 million for gasoline and 300,000 barrels for distillates, which include heating oil.
Oil prices have rebounded in recent weeks since their lows below $30 a barrel earlier this year on the back of declines in U.S. output and expectations that major producers will agree to supply limits at an April 17 meeting in Qatar. But global oil stockpiles remain near record highs, and U.S. crude inventories are at their highest levels in more than 80 years. “Iran, a country who has no interest in cooperating in a production freeze will continue to be the wild card” at the coming meetings for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said Macaluso.