Energy Market Updates

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saudi arabia

World Fuel Markets React to Escalating Hamas-Israeli Conflict

The obvious market moving story is the impact on world fuel markets of the Hamas – Israeli conflict that appears to be growing more intense by the day.  As traders are trying to digest what could turn into a regional mess, expect wild swings for the short term. 

At the root is how much, if any, was Iran involved as they have openly backed Hamas.  Furthermore, the US and others, have been turning a blind eye to Iran’s oil production in an effort to keep global markets well supplied.  It is a tight rope to walk for sure.  Putting downward pressure on markets in the US are revised demand figures that are now to said to be about 25% less than originally forecasted through the end of 2025.  For a variety of factors which we all are seeing on a daily basis be it better fuel efficiencies, alternative energies, or just a slowdown.  Additionally, it started to come out that Saudi Arabia is not abiding by their self imposed cuts, news struck that the Kingdom has agreed to fully supply several far east customers.   My sense is that we will bounce around this current range just below $3.00 on the screen before ultimately pulling back some more.

Even though pricing remains high in the near term, it still important to look further out.  Next spring distillate pricing remains significantly less than current pricing and some bargains might exist.  For budgeting purposes, bidding jobs, or locking in pricing, we can assist you for your organizations specific needs. Schedule a Call

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Thank you Cpt. Obvious, Banks Say Lower Production Means Higher Prices

Coming off the Monday Holiday, prices surged higher Tuesday as OPEC+ heavyweights Russia and Saudi Arabia confirmed they would extend voluntary production cuts through the end of the year.  Fueling the rise from the Cpt. Obvious department, big banks publish reports to expect $107 Crude if cuts maintain.  Buy the rumor, sell the fact.  Diesel had a nice sell off going, but remember, one day doesn’t reverse the trend.  Wednesdays intraday action erased almost all of the gains only to settle down slightly.  While we still sit almost $1 higher in pricing than the beginning of the Summer, you would have to think better days are to come.  Current JUNE 24 Diesel future pricing is $.45 less than front month October 23. 

For the here and now, we all know $1 a gallon increase cuts into your bottom line significantly, many large airlines have started to float it out there not to expect good earnings due to higher fuel costs.  We can assist you in leveling out those spikes based on your specific needs.  Inventory numbers due out later today, delayed from the holiday, should give short term direction of pricing.  Even if modest drops are reported, I would expect to see the downward trend continue for diesel.  Gasoline is still disjointed from Diesel as it is starting to go into it’s seasonal specification switch which tends to push pricing down.  Timing is important in the fuel world, having an open line of communication with your supplier is vital. If you want to schedule a meeting to discuss your specific needs or questions, you can do so here: Schedule a Meeting

 

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Holding out for a Correction Amid Conflicting Data

There is no sauce that can make crow taste good.  I’ve been holding to the mindset that Diesel futures market should correct to the mid $2.30s for about a month now.  We have risen over $.50 in that time with every day for the last two weeks being up.  Well, I am going on “the bound to win” theory and sticking with it! 

Strong economic data has pushed commodities as US GDP grew 2.4% last quarter, thus continued higher demand equals higher prices.  On the other hand, the FED hiked rates another ¼ percent this week which should be bearish for the products.  It appears to be overshadowed by the view of many that this is the end of the hikes as the Fed Chairman noting that “Fed staff no longer were forecasting a recession later this year, as it had in prior months.” 

Throw in the inventory report that showed stocks fall across the board and demand surprisingly resilient, the $.20 jump the last few days is easily explainable.  Gasoline is in the same boat, rising almost $.50 is the last month.  It is important to acknowledge how long, or how well, will OPEC+ countries be able to maintain their self-imposed production cuts as many Nations economies are negatively affected by them.  Saudi Arabia only is down over 8%, and the fact that all these countries are continually wrestling for market share, this could bring on a huge correction in prices.   

High prices are fun for nobody, we at DKB understand that, and work hard to provide outstanding service at a fair price.  I am always willing to discuss how we can assist your specific needs, please do not hesitate to reach out. If you would like to schedule a time to talk about your specific needs, you can pick a time that works for you best using this link: Market Talk - Set a Meeting

7.28.23 ULSD

 

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Where there's Smoke, there's Conflicting Market Indicators?

It appears that the Canadian Wildfires have spread a cloudy haze not just over the Northeast but also over the collective minds in the Fuel Markets.  The last few days produced data that simply put, has baffled market sentiment.  First to note, Diesel prices are roughly $2 LESS per gallon today versus a year ago.  Thus, one would assume production and inventories to fall.  This week’s Inventory report showed production is UP 2% and Inventories are UP 2.5%, yet future pricing is about $.20 HIGHER than a week ago.  Again, usually higher stocks trigger lower production and falling prices. 

Throw in that Saudi Arabia announced it was going alone and instituting an additional 1mbpd cut and domestic diesel demand is UP 4.5% over last year, this appears to have many bewildered as to market direction.  The other head scratcher is the US freight Index, which measures all shipping/freight volumes and is looked at as a barometer for the economy showed that we are DOWN 2.5% over last year.  How can demand be up, but freight be down?  Granted there are other avenues of usage, but shipping is typically the brunt of it. 

As we have been saying, we will likely be within this $.20 range from high to low for the next few weeks until some sort of clarity prevails.  We are keeping an eye on the developing backwardation again in both gas and diesel pricing. (outer months less then front months)  While we thought we were past this, it may start to limit what some bring into storage.  It is crucial to have a Supplier on your side rather than a Marketer.

6.8.23 ULSD

 

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Oil Spikes on OPEC+ Agreement

shutterstock_651733465WTI jumped over 5% late this morning, as news broke that OPEC+ members would be agreeing not to raise production levels in April. According to reports, the current established levels for each of the member countries will be continuing as is through April and May, and the Saudi's are planning to forge ahead with continuing to keep the additional 1 million barrels per day offline as agreed to for February and March.

The news of continued cuts leaking from the (currently still happening) meeting surprised the markets, which is part of why we are seeing such a jump - often the predicted outcomes are "priced in" but today analysts fully expected that the ruling would be to let production cuts expire at the end of March as scheduled, and assumed Saudi Arabia would be ramping up production. We have started to see signals of demand levels returning, which, along with the ongoing price rally, had made analysts comfortable that OPEC would begin to ramp production levels back up. Reports indicate that Saudi Arabia urged caution and pushed for today's cut extensions, with Energy Minister Prince Abduliziz bin Salaman saying "Let us be certain the glimmer we see ahead is not the headlight of an oncoming express train"

Yesterday, prices jumped as well as the weekly EIA data for the US showed that the snowstorms and widespread freezing that impacted states in the Gulf Coast region continued to wreak havoc on refinery utilization. Crude stockpiles ramped up by 21.5 million barrels for the week ending Feb 26. That build is even larger than what we saw last April when the sudden imposition of COVID lockdowns demolished demand across essentially all sectors immediately. Crude built as a result of the lack of refinery capacity still in effect, and the opposite was seen (of course) on refined products. Although draws on refined products were clearly predicted, the EIA report still shocked as it showed draws on gasoline of 13.6 million barrels (about 5 times the anticipated draw) and distillates drew down 9.7 million barrels, versus the 3 million predicted.

In other news today, Houthi rebels in Yemen are claiming responsibility for a missile strike on a Saudi oil facility in Jiddah, in a continuation of infrastructure strikes in the ongoing proxy war. The conflict is definitely something to keep an eye on - as we saw in September 2019, attacks on Aramco infrastructure can rock the markets pretty severely. 

At today's close, WTI settled at $63.83. ULSD +.0603 to $1.8960, Gasoline up .0461 to $1.9979

 

 

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Despite Friday Drops, Gains for the Week on NYMEX

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Despite today's across the board drops on refined prices, (-.0262 UL & -.0255 RBOB) this week saw oil prices overall continue to tick upward. 

What's pushing prices up? A weaker dollar, and stronger confidence in economic rebound as the vaccine rollouts continue. At play as well is new agreement on supply curbs by Saudi Arabia in tandem with larger than expected draws in US inventory levels. 

Wednesday prices came close to hitting 1-year highs at the close, briefly going over in intraday trading for Brent Crude. So far, halfway through January, Crude prices are up ~9% or so as confidence builds in eventual recovery from the COVID induced shut downs and resulting dips in demand that we saw push WTI into negative territory about 10 months ago. 

In terms of the supply side, EIA reports indicated that US Crude inventories dropped a little over half a million barrels for the prior week, with gasoline dropping 1.1mmb & distillates dropping 2.3mmb - double what some analysts had projected. More broadly, Saudi Arabia has pledged to cut its output by 1mmb/day which will drop overall production levels, even though Russia will actually have allowance to produce slightly higher levels than before. Sort of an odd twist to the usual OPEC+ setup - you can read more about the specifics on the deal here in the New York Times: Saudi Arabia Will Cut Its Own Production, Allowing Russia's to Grow 

On the demand side of the equation, talks regarding further stimulus under the Biden Administration, as well as continued vaccine rollout seems to have traders (and everyone else) hopeful about eventual demand recovery as the economy hopefully strengthens and rebounds once immunity levels hit threshold. 

We did however see drops today to close the week out across the board. Front month ULSD & RBOB settled at 1.5929 & 1.5284 respectively, with Crude at 52.36/bbl. March numbers closed out with ULSD off .0263 to 1.5942, and gasoline dropped .0261 to 1.577. 

Who knows what happens next. Enjoy your weekend & stay tuned! 

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Price War! Oil drops 24% on Saudi Reversal & COVID Economic Carnage

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Oil markets were tumbling well before the open today, and unfortunately we didn't see that turn around at all through the course of the official trading day.

At the open, we were down -.2076 on ULSD, and -.2362 on gas and it only went downhill from there.

At the close, Crude settled at an incredible $31.13/bbl (down 24%!!), ULSD dropped -.2223 to $1.1629 & RBOB dropped .2521 to $1.1369.

Stock markets took a pounding today as well, dropping precipitously enough for trading to be temporarily halted when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 2,000 points after the open this morning. (Both the S&P and DJIA are down over 6% as of writing)

So what's going on?

In response to Russian refusal on the proposed OPEC production cuts, Saudi Arabia has completely changed course on cuts and announced they will not only be pumping at capacity starting April 1 (upon the expiration of the current cuts) but they are also additionally discounting by a reported 4-8 $ per barrel, with preferential pricing going to the US & Europe.

The move is meant to undercut other producers across the board  - somewhat reminiscent of the strategy employed to attempt to push out U.S. Shale production back in 2014-2016(ish) and retain market share at the expense of other producer nations (refresher/throwback on that here: 2015 - backstory on that strategy impact on Russia back then here as well: 2016 ) 

The thing is though, the math has changed substantially on both the Russian & US fronts in terms of capital on hand to withstand the drop in the case of Russia, and production cost and infrastructure in the case of the United States, so it will be interesting to see who blinks first. It's unlikely to be Russia, they announced they can withstand $25 oil for 2 years. (whether that is true or not remains to be seen)  

The second half of the equation today is that the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak is seriously dampening both global economic expectations, and oil demand. In particular, as US cases rise, concerns rise as well on economic impacts. Fear of the virus becoming a full on global pandemic are also in play now as Italy made the move to quarantine an entire region this weekend in an attempt to contain the spread. 

Basically, falling oil prices and falling demand paired with virus induced low global economic growth is igniting fears of a recession. In particular, the US, who has recently become a major producer and net exporter, could feel major impacts that we are not used to. 

Again, it's anyone's guess if we are seeing the bottom or not yet or how long it will take for the factors involved to reverse course. In the mean time, stay tuned (and wash your hands!)

 

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NYMEX spikes in wake of Saudi Arabia attacks

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Saturday, ten unmanned drones struck a major Saudi Aramco facility in Saudi Arabia, and immediately took 5.7 million barrels out of the global supply. The Abqaiq plant that was impacted is one of the world's largest processors. 

The Saudi government indicated that Iranian weapons were responsible but stopped short of blaming Iran for the attack, (although US Secretary of State Pompeo did NOT stop short and explicitly called Iran out in a series of tweets).

Yemeni Houthi rebels have taken credit for the strike, and threatened further escalation but it's unclear if they are, in fact, responsible.

Initial reports seem to indicate the attack did not come from Yemen, but Iran has denied any involvement. A lot of the long range implications of the attack will of course hinge on whether military escalation from other nations becomes probable, which directly depends on whether Iran, Yemeni rebels, or a third party was responsible. 

Markets reacted in a big way - Crude was up on the overnights, and Crude, ULSD & RBOB all surged within seconds of the open, and never came back down. 

At the close, ULSD was up a whopping +.2060 to $2.0838, RBOB +.1993 to $1.7524 and Crude $62.90 (+8.05 over Friday's settle) 

This is still a developing story - CNN has a great, continually updating article you can follow new developments on in real time here: Saudi Attacks Send Oil Prices Soaring 

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G20 Summit Answers Looming Market Questions

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Prices surged this morning after a slow down on Friday, on news from the G20 Summit that Russia and Saudi Arabia have agreed to extend the OPEC+ production cuts by another 6-9 months. The agreement still needs to be ratified at the upcoming OPEC meeting, but that is essentially a formality at this point, given Russia & the Saudi's are in agreement. 

The demand side of the equation also got a boost from the announcement by President Trump that no new sanctions would be put in place on China, at least for now. Speculation on potential tariffs has been a cloud over trading for several weeks. 

Markets were up huge this morning, with gas briefly up over 5 cents and diesel not far behind, and Brent Crude up over 2%. It calmed over the trading day however, and at the close we saw ULSD +.0144 to $1.9538, Gas up .0339 to $1.9305 and Crude settled at $59.09

Looking backward, despite closing down on Friday, the month of June was up 9% on concern about Iranian-US tensions, Chinese tariffs, and the OPEC/G20 production discussions. Now that some of these have evidently been resolved, at least temporarily, it will be interesting to see what July holds for market moves. 

Stay Tuned! 

 

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OPEC vs "NOPEC" Drama Pushes NYMEX Up

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The NYMEX was up today across the board, with Crude closing out at $63.08/bbl, comfortably above that $60 benchmark, and refined products both edged up almost 3 cents, with ULSD closing at 2.0424 (+.0290) and RBOB settling at 1.9687 (+.0288).

So what's going on?

March Oil production from OPEC on preliminary reporting is down 570k barrels per day, primarily driven by drops from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Domestically, rig counts are up, suggesting some level of confidence in prices stabilizing or continuing to increase on the part of producers. Crude production levels are still up overall as well.

Another factor coming back into play this week was the so called “NOPEC” (“No Oil Producing Cartels”) bill in the US that aims to hold OPEC nations potentially liable for what are considered “cartel-like” practices. Currently (and historically) there is no real legal recourse against things like so-called market fixing and this bill aims to change that in terms of establishing liability.

The reason we care about this bill popping up again is that rumor has it the Saudis are responding to the prospect of the bill being pushed through by threatening to drop the dollar as the currency basis for their oil trading.

This might sound familiar because the same thing happened a few years ago. Threats over currency changes and essentially market flooding by the kingdom led to prices crashing (back when we ended out at $30/bbl, from the $100 ish its hard to remember being used to), which drove a substantial number of US based producers out of business (particularly those highly leveraged on shale plays). At the time, the Saudis essentially had enough cash in hand to allow the prices to bottom in order to retain market share and production dominance, where anything under $50-60 a barrel was unsustainable for US companies. 

 So long story short, the threat to replace the dollar is the threat to wreak havoc on the US economy via crashing the market. (One would hope the irony of that being your response to being called a cartel would register)

A point to remember is that at the end of the day, despite production level increases, the US is still a marginal producer, not a swing producer like OPEC, so production is almost fully determined by market price levels. And the dollar being removed as the basis for trading could seriously impact those price levels.

 So at least for today, we closed up on all the drama, but also the fundamentals.

 Time will tell if we hang around the $60 benchmark, or continue to move upward and a substantial portion of which way we go will depend on continuing production cuts globally, and what happens on currency basis changes.

 Stay tuned!

 

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