Market Commentary

There is no forward contracting available today as the energy markets are closed. Crude oil prices were up 1.5% on Friday and up roughly 8% on the week. The rally in prices was mainly driven by the fall in consumer price index (CPI) from last month which in turn pushed […]

The propane inventory report showed a draw to inventories of 2.094 million barrels putting total inventories at 78.587 million. Midwest inventories were down 1.055 million putting total Midwest inventories at 22.681 million. Gulf Coast inventories were down 542,000 barrel putting Gulf Coast inventories at 45.251 million barrels. The DOE report […]

The Chinese lunar new year starts on January 16th, and last up to 23 days and this celebration is being seen as an economic stimulus and should help energy demand. However, there are some experts that say if China opens its borders for the Lunar New year, COVID-19 cases may […]

Phillips 66 expects supplies of gasoline and diesel to be tight this summer. Jeff Dietert, a Phillips 66 vice president said globally, there has been a loss of about 4.7 million bpd of processing capacity. Less capacity have driven up refiner’s margins and utilization rates as demand recovered. He said, […]

The API inventory report called crude oil up 3.3 million barrels, gasoline up 1.2 million barrels, and distillates down 2.4 million barrels. Despite the draw in crude prices are higher this morning. After two big down days the market is due a bounce. The big questions everyone want to know […]

The energy markets have seen a very strong pullback from recent highs and today the market is lower again putting us back to level just before the Christmas Holiday break. Pundits were calling bad China news the catalysts for the downside. China’s official manufacturing PMI index was down to 47.0 […]

The Baker Hughes Rig Count had crude oil rigs down 1 to a total of 621 oil rigs and last year at this time there were 480 oil rigs in operation. Domestic production continues to hang right around the 12 million barrels per day mark. Energy markets traded higher on […]

No contracting tomorrow Friday December 23 or Monday December 26 as our offices are closed. Propane inventories were down 2.921 million barrels putting total propane inventories at 87.415 million barrels. Last year there were 70.023 million barrels so there are now 17.392 million more barrels than last year. Propane inventories […]

The API inventory report called crude oil inventories down 3.1 million barrels, gasoline stocks up 4.5 million barrels and distillates down 828,000 barrels. The average estimated for today’s DOE inventory report from the Bloomberg survey are crude down 131,000, gasoline up 1.819, and distillates up 645,000. The estimate for today’s […]

This is a short trading week with our offices closed on Friday December 23rd. No contracts offered on that day. Monday December 26 our offices are also closed so no contracting that day. That also makes next week a short trading week. This is likely to result in limited traders […]

Supporting prices on Friday was the news that the US will buy 3 million barrels of oil for February delivery to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. However, it is not clear if purchases to fill the depleted reserve will continue or if this purchase is a one-off purchase. Over 6 […]

US retail sales fell by 0.6% in November 2022 from October 2022, which was 3 times higher than the 0.2% fall expected by economist. US manufacturing showed signs of peaking. Production was up by just 1.4% in November compared with the same month a year earlier, the smallest increase for […]