The Carolina's are bracing for a potentially "once in a lifetime" strength Hurricane and evacuations are already underway. Hurricane Florence is expected to make landfall Friday at a category 4, with the preceding rain & storm surge expected to begin early Thursday.
Oil was down today as the market weighed out OPEC speculation on one hand, and a drop in US Crude inventories on the other.
WTI was in the red today ahead of the EIA inventory report.
Today, the NYMEX continued it's winning streak - At the end of the day, we settled up across the board yet again, with Crude settling out at $48.75/bbl (+1.7%), ULSD climbed +.0268 to $1.5953 and RBOB edged up +.02111 to $1.6173.
Today saw oil prices have the biggest one day rally of 2017 thus far, with WTI Crude surging up 3.3% ($1.55) to settle out at $47.89/bbl. Likewise, refined products surged, with ULSD jumping over 5 cents (+.0516) to 1.5685, and gasoline jumped +.0394 to settle at 1.5962.
The oil markets were down sharply this morning on increasing cynicism that, essentially, global supply will not be driven down sufficiently by either OPEC or "non-cartel" producer production caps, or the summer driving season in the U.S. being upon us (despite the weather here in Boston, technically yes, its summer driving season).
Crude closed out today at over $50 ($50.44 to be exact) which is the highest close we've seen since June. ULSD closed up .0135 to $1.5958 and RBOB ended up .0050 at $1.4978.
On Wednesday, OPEC countries made a surprise agreement to cap production at 32.5-33 million BPD at their meeting in Algiers (if you’re keeping score at home, current production is about 33.24mmb.. insert yawn here, in other words). This marked the first deal since 2008, largely on account of Saudi-Iranian tensions – more on that later. Oil spiked on the news before backing off slightly over the remainder of the week.
Crude jumped on today’s inventory report after jumping up on the overnights last night as well. Post close yesterday, the API numbers were indicating significant draws and the EIA release backed that projection up.
The EIA report this morning indicated that Crude inventories dropped by 14.5 million barrels for last week, which is the biggest drop we’ve seen this millennium (since 1999).
Analysts are partly blaming the effects of Hermine on the Gulf Coast delaying production and explaining the draw down in stocks.
Gasoline stocks also dropped, by 4.5 million barrels, and also unexpectedly.
Today closed out up across the board, with diesel up .0557 to $1.4822, Gas up .0701 to $1.4165 and Crude closing out at $47.62. (significantly up from yesterday’s Crude settle of $45.50)
An interesting aside on gasoline’s jump today was that the lowest Labor Day retail gasoline prices in 12 years were seen this past weekend, and if you jump online there are literally dozens of articles projecting that the post summer driving season price levels for gasoline will drop below $2 per gallon. It’s more likely than not that these articles are correct versus today’s inventory and price rebound. Nothing has changed fundamentally with either Crude or gasoline in terms of long term supply and demand outlooks (despite some new rumblings about Russia and Saudi Arabia, as usual).
August has been all over the place. Crude futures this month were up 23% in less than 3 weeks as of the 28th. We've bounced from an August 10th low of $41.71 to an August 19th a high of $48.52 - and today we’re in the middle at $46.35.