OPEC May Extend Production Cuts
December 2, 2019
On a short trading day with limited traders on the job Friday the market sold off hard. Crude was down $2.99 per barrel, RBOB futures down $0.0855 and ULSD was down $0.0668 on the day. The market has opened higher overnight and in early trading this morning has taken back about half of those losses. Nothing fundamentally has changed it was just a light trading day in which prices were pushed hard due to limited traders.
There was a lot of OPEC production cut chatter over the weekend. Reports of cuts being extend through next year, others that the cuts would be increased but nothing concrete as of now and that news will likely come at the December OPEC meeting in just a few days. Russian also had their own comments to toss into the mix as well just to garner some headlines.
China has retaliated toward the US support for its support of protesters in Hong Kong, but not with more tariffs but with sanctions on US human-rights organization operating in the city, and US Navy ships visits to Hong Kong ports will be suspended.
The DOE inventory numbers from last week. Crude stocks were up 1.572 million barrels, gasoline stocks were up 5.13 million barrels and distillate stocks were up 730,000 barrels.
Crude stocks are at 451.952 million barrels which is 1.467 more than last year at this time. Gasoline stocks are at 225.978 million barrels which is 1.427 more than last year at this time. Distillate stocks are at 116.406 million barrels which is 5.395 million less barrels than last year at this time.
US propane stocks were down 683,000 in last week inventory update. Midwest stock were down 483,000 barrels and the Gulf Coast stocks were up 385,000 barrels. Total propane stocks are at 93.527 million barrels which is 12.384 million more than last year at this time. The Midwest total stock are at 22.903 million barrels which is 3.117 less than last year at the same time. Gulf Coast stocks total stocks are at 58.555 million barrels which is 14.713 million more than last year.