Mississippi River Levels Hit Lowest Depths Since 1980s
October 31, 2022
Crude oil and gasoline prices were down on Friday, but ULSD price rallied. Bearish for prices was the Chinese National Health Commission saying China increased COVID-19 protections by sealing up buildings and locking down districts after 1,506 new cases were reported on October 27th. The IFM lowered China’s GDP by 1.2% down to 3.2% this year after rising by 8.1% in 2021.
Baker Hughes reported that 2 crude oil rigs came offline down to a total of 610 oil rigs. Last year at this time the US only had 444 oil rigs online. Despite the decline in rigs this week for the entire month of October rigs rose for the first monthly increase since July.
According to Saudi state news agency SPA, Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Price Addulziz bin Salman held discussions on supporting and increasing the stability of the international oil market with European minister.
According to Reuters, US diesel supplies are becoming critically low with shortages and price spikes likely to occur in the next six month unless and until the economy and fuel consumption slow. Stocks of diesel and other distillate fuels oil were 106 million barrels on October 21st, the lowest for the time of year since the US EIA started collecting weekly data in 1982.
Southern California’s ports handled the lowest volume of containers in the month of September since 2009, as spending on merchandise slowed and retailers struggled to reduce excess inventories.
The Mississippi River is reported to be at its lowest water depth sine the 1980s. This has impacted the shipping of some goods down the river and causes shipping rates to surge up.