Market Commentary

Crude oil inventories at Cushing, Okla., the delivery point for the NYMEX WTI futures contracts, are at 21.6 million barrels, the lowest seasonal level since 2014. Stocks have not been this low since 2008, when front-month WTI crude prices were at $122 (or $170 per barrel adjusted for inflation). Energy […]

President Joe Biden met with officials from Saudi Arabia on Friday, and the bottom line is that it did not yield any action to produce more crude oil. This has again increased the concerns about supply and should offer some support to prices. Of course, both sides are reporting a […]

The EIA inventory report said that crude oil stocks were up 3.25 million barrels, gasoline stocks up 5.83 million barrels and distillates up 2.67 million barrels. Builds across the board is a welcome thing but take the over six million barrels SPR release and crude stocks over all are down. […]

The average estimates for today’s EIA inventory update are calling for crude oil supplies to be down 469,000 barrels, gasoline supplies down 1.008 million barrels and distillate supplies up 792,000 barrels.  The API inventory report put out yesterday said that crude oil stocks were up 4.8 million barrels, gasoline stocks […]

With the Federal Reserve expected to keep raising interest rates, open interest in NYMEX futures fell on July 7 to its lowest level since October 2015 as investors cut back on risky assets. Speculative longs have liquidated about 20% of their positions. The next round of the Consumer Price Index […]

The Baker Hughes Rig Count had oil rigs up 2 to a total of 597 and last year at this time there were 378 oil rigs. Oil rigs are at their highest level since March 2020. WTI and Brent crude oil prices rose significantly on Friday by 2.0% or more […]

The DOE inventory report will not come out today. The EIA announced that due to technical issues the report will not be released. There is some debate about whether this report gets updated later or if we just get a report next week. Until the “technical issues” are resolved we […]

AAA expects a record 42 million people in the US to take to the open road over the July 4th holiday weekend. If their projections are correct, 2022 would outpace 2019 when holiday travel was 41.5 million people. The outlook for this year comes despite the fact that gas prices […]

This is a short trading week as yesterday the market was closed, and we only have four days left to finish out this week. The market is still concerned about a recession which will slow energy demand. On the other side of the coin is the low physical inventories and […]

Bloomberg Economics models indicates the odds for a recession by 2024 have jumped to at least 72%. Many economists think the Fed needs to raise rates faster to slow down the economy and help ease inflation. The continued fear of a recession has taken some of the luster off the […]

The energy markets are headed into a three-day holiday weekend in the United States and that normally gives rise to traders getting out of their short positions, which means then most buy to close the positions and this should support crude oil prices into the long weekend. US gasoline prices […]

The estimates for today’s DOE inventory report from the Bloomberg survey are estimated to show crude oil supplied down 1.231 million barrels, gasoline supplies up 224,000 barrels and distillates up 168,000 barrels. Refinery run rates are estimated to be up 0.5% to 94.2% of capacity. Refineries look to continue to […]