Market Commentary
U.S. Oil Production to Bottom in June?
May 28, 2020
Morgan Stanley raised its year-end Brent price forecast to $40 per barrel. It cited a faster-than-expected rise in global oil demand as countries ease coronavirus restrictions and oil producers cut supply. Morgan Stanley estimates as much as 6 million bpd will be undersupplied to the market by the end of […]
Supply and Demand to Balance by June?
May 27, 2020
Bjornar Tonhaugen of Rystad Energy says supply and demand may balance sooner than expected. The market is currently oversupplied by 16 million barrels per day in crude and that could be reversed altogether by June according to Tonghaugen. A 4-million-barrel-per-day recovery in crude demand and a 12-million-barrel-per-day cut in crude […]
Rig Count Totals Continue to Plummet
May 26, 2020
Rig counts continues to decline. The Baker Hughes report on showed a decline of 21 rigs from the prior week and a new total of 237 rigs. There were 797 rigs in operation at this time last year – a difference of 560 rigs. This is the lowest rig count […]
Prices Rally as Lockdowns End
May 22, 2020
US crude oil production is expected to fall by about 1.75 million bpd from recent levels by early June. IHS Markit said operating cash losses, a lack of demand and storage capacity and no interest in giving away oil all played a role in the expected decline in oil production. […]
U.S. Distillate Demand is Down
May 21, 2020
The basic outlook that production is lower, and demand is going up as lockdowns ease has continued to support this rally. The selloff that put in the lows in April was extreme and since those lows, ULSD has rallied $0.44 cents and RBOB has rallied $0.60 cents and technically crude […]
Fed Looks to Keep Economic Recovery Going
May 20, 2020
The API released their inventory update yesterday afternoon and it showed crude oil stocks down 4.8 million barrels and the stocks of crude oil at Cushing, Ok were done 5 million barrels. Gasoline stocks were down 651,000 barrels and distillate stocks were down 5.08 million barrels. About 108 million people […]
Vaccine News & Fuel Demand Recovery
May 19, 2020
Crude oil and refined fuel product prices rose significantly yesterday and reached 2-month highs for most indexes. The rise in prices yesterday was mainly driven by good news about testing of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, positive comments from the Federal Reserve, rising U.S. equities, and signs of fuel demand increasing […]
Oil Market Rebalancing Underway
May 18, 2020
As more places around the globe start to reopen after shutdowns the outlook for many investors and traders is positive and the market is up this morning on this optimism. Production cuts have happened faster than many thought and demand is slowly coming back with the reopening creating the thought […]
Oil Price Contango Narrows
May 15, 2020
The market had a strong up day yesterday as the bulls jumped on the bandwagon after a selloff that took prices to the low end of the market’s trading range and have now rallied back to the top of that range. Many are saying the bullish inventory report, the first […]
Fed Comments Worry Market
May 14, 2020
The comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell were concerning to the market and created selling pressure. The worrisome outlook he gave for the economy and talk that more support would be needed to keep the economy going were enough to see energy prices pushed lower despite what many saw […]
Motorist Traffic Fell 19% in March
May 13, 2020
The inventory report from the API said that crude stocks were up 7.6 million barrels and that the crude stocks at Cushing, Ok were down 2.3 million barrels. Gasoline stocks were called down 1.9 million barrels and distillate stocks were up 4.7 million barrels. Estimates from Reuters for today’s DOE […]
India Fuel Demand Fell 45.8% in April
May 12, 2020
There are several members of OPEC that are making voluntary additional production cuts to try and remove the glut of oil in the market and support prices. A Saudi Arabian energy ministry official said that the ministry has directed Saudi Aramco to cut its crude oil production for June by […]