Market Commentary

The market continues to focus on more vaccines getting administered and more states easing lockdown restrictions fueling the optimism of a strong economic recovery and strong energy demand. This outlook continue to push energy prices higher. A weak US dollar that continues to be soft is also supporting higher commodity […]

Energy prices closed lower on Friday after rallying for a month and rising for this week as traders took profits at the end of the month as the ULSD and RBOB contracts expired. The US dollar also bounced and traded higher putting pressure on commodities. The rising cases of COVID-19 […]

US economic growth accelerated in the first quarter, supported by massive government aid to households and businesses. The Commerce Department said GDP increased at a 6.4% annualized rate in the first quarter. That was the second-fastest GDP growth pace since the third quarter of 2003 and followed a 4.3% rate […]

Crude oil and refined fuel product prices closed higher yesterday upon the news the OPEC+ met a day earlier than planned and decided to keep their current plan to gradually raise oil output for May through July. The market saw this as a positive with OPEC+ appearing to not be […]

Crude oil and refined fuel product prices closed slightly over 1% higher on Friday but fell for the week. Baker Hughes reported that oil rigs were down 1 rig, the first decline in rigs for five weeks. Drillers had been adding to the number of rigs, which had been up […]

The US House on Tuesday passed a bill to open the OPEC oil production group and countries working with it to lawsuits for collusion in boosting petroleum prices. OPEC Secretary-General, Mohammad Barkindo, said US assets and personnel overseas could be at risk if the country decided to pass a bill […]

Propane inventories were down 74,000 barrels putting total stocks at 40.514 million barrels. Total stocks last year were at 57.442 million a 16.928 difference. The five year rolling average total stocks is 48.836 million an 8.322 million difference. Midwest stocks were up 303,000 barrels putting total Midwest stocks at 10.098 […]

The API had crude oil stocks up 436,000 barrels, Cushing crude stocks down 1.3 million, gasoline stocks down 1.6 million and distillates up 655,000. The average estimated for today’s DOE inventory update from the Bloomberg survey. Crude down 3.266 million, gasoline up 947,000 and distillates down 1.278 million. The European […]

Baker Hughes reported that 7 crude oil rigs came online last week in the US up to a total of 344 rigs. Oil rigs have risen by 172 rigs since August of 2020. Prices continue to be supported by the falling US dollar and strong economic data for both China […]

There has been a lot of good economic news offering support to the bullish sentiment. Core US retail sales (less auto and gas) rose 8.2% in March from February, which was much higher than the 4.4% rise expected by economist. US jobless claims came in at just 576,000 claims for […]

The DOE inventory report had crude down more than expected, gasoline stocks up less than expected and distillates down big when a build was expected. Prices rallied hard on the inventory numbers. Crude was down 5.89 million barrels putting total stocks at 492.423, 11 million less than last year but […]

Crude oil and refined fuel products prices closed yesterday mixed after being down hard in the morning trading hours due to concerns of EIA reporting on Wednesday a large rise in US gasoline and distillates stocks. Also helping the early weakness were reports that Spain and Italy have now joined […]