Fueling Strategy: Please fill as needed tonight – Be Safe

NYMEX Crude $ 44.78 DN $1.1400
NY Harbor ULSD $1.3555 DN $0.0305
NYMEX Gasoline $1.5628 DN $0.0416

NEWS
Oil futures fell below $45 a barrel on Monday as traders sold some of their positions after a nearly 20% climb in April. Data that reportedly show a significant weekly rise in stockpiles at the Cushing, Okla. storage hub, rising output from major oil producers, and some downbeat U.S. economic figures that hinted at the potential for weaker energy demand combined to pressure prices Monday.

June West Texas Intermediate crude traded at $44.88 a barrel, down $1.04, or 2.3%, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices settled Friday with a gain of roughly 19.8% for the month of April. July Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $1.18, or 2.5%, to $46.19 a barrel.

Traders on Twitter said that energy data provider Genscape on Monday reported a weekly climb in crude stockpiles of more than 800,000 barrels at Cushing. Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group, suggested that the rise may be due to the recent flooding in parts of Texas. Genscape’s numbers on Cushing inventories tend to be “pretty accurate because they are tracking actual pipeline flows,” said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric. “However, what the market really cares about from the [American Petroleum Institute] and [Energy Information Administration] numbers is the overall crude stock change since that’s more representative of the overall market fundamentals,” he said. Genscape’s number may roughly match the EIA number for Cushing when it’s released Wednesday, “but that alone won’t tell you if the [EIA] report will be bullish or bearish,” he said.

Meanwhile, economic data raised worries over oil demand. The Institute for Supply Management’s U.S. manufacturing index fell more than expected to 50.8% last month from 51.8% in March, while China’s manufacturing purchasing managers index, a key gauge of factory activity, fell to 50.1 in April fro 50.2 in March. Profit-taking for oil had started at the end of last week, with prices posting a loss for Friday’s session. They had touched 2016 highs Thursday as investors pinned their hopes on expectations that crude inventories would continue to decline.

Looking ahead, the outlook for oil is unclear, as the focus for price direction “swings between positive and negative” influences, said Nico Pantelis, an analyst at Secular Investor. Weakness in the U.S. dollar in combination with shrinking supply and inventory in the U.S., are among the positive factors for oil prices, but rising crude production from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has put a lid on any price increases, he said. OPEC crude-oil production surged by 484,000 barrels to 33.217 million a day in April, according to a Bloomberg survey released Friday. Still, Pantelis said WTI oil could climb toward the $50 to $60 level this summer, “where it could settle for a while. “Of course, this scenario doesn’t take into account extraordinary events, which is always the unknown factor in the Middle East,” he said.