Fueling Strategy: Please partial fill tonight, Thursday AM wholesale prices will drop almost 2 cents – Be Safe!!

NYMEX Crude $ 40.75 UP $.0800
NY Harbor ULSD $1.3804 UP $.0123
NYMEX Gasoline $1.2661 UP $0.0281

NEWS
Oil futures eked out a modest gain Wednesday, with the U.S. benchmark recovering from a dip below $40 a barrel for the first time since August, driven lower by another rise in crude-oil inventories.

Oil futures found their footing after a dollar rally stalled in the wake of the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s October policy meeting. The dollar initially jumped after the minutes showed “most” members of the rate-setting committee saw scope to deliver a rate rise in December, but dollar gains were short lived in an apparent rush of profit taking. That allowed oil futures, which like other dollar-denominated commodities often move in the opposite direction of the currency, to regain some steam ahead of the close.

West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery ended with a gain of 8 cents, or 0.2%, at $40.75 a barrel, after earlier dipping as low as $39.91 a barrel.January Brent crude futures on the Intercontinental Exchange rose 57 cents, or 1.3%, to end at $44.14 a barrel.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday said domestic crude-oil inventories rose by 252,000 barrels last week. Analysts surveyed by oil-information firm Platts had forecast a rise of 1.1 million barrels. But it was the 1.5 million barrel rise in inventories at Cushing, Okla., the delivery point for Nymex crude oil futures, that “started to unravel the market,” said Robert Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities.“It’s a very bearish number, actually. It’s a blinking sell signal,” he said, in a phone interview.

And while the rise in overall crude inventories was less than forecast, response to that figure was muted after the American Petroleum Institute late Tuesday reported that U.S. crude inventories had dropped by 482,000 barrels. That had stoked hopes that the more closely followed EIA data would also show a drop analysts said. Analysts have remained focused on supply worries ahead of a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries next month. “We are likely to see the kind of volatility…particularly as you hear different things from different ministers” before the OPEC meeting, said Virendra Chauhan, oil analyst at Singapore-based Energy Aspect. “There is a little bit of geopolitical risk, but the fundamentals remain bearish. In this kind of market, 50 cents up or down is more or less just noise.”

Oil prices had nudged up immediately after the weekend attacks in Paris and retaliatory French airstrikes on Islamic State strongholds in Syria, causing some concern about potential disruption of oil output from the region. Since then, prices have been trading in a narrow range with small moves up and down as traders weighed the geopolitical risk of output halts with the oversupply situation.Traders don’t expect a big change in OPEC’s stance of maintaining output despite a slump in prices. Rather than a retrenchment in production, the group is likely to raise its production cap as new member Indonesia is slated to join the cartel.