Energy Market Updates

Thursday saw prices tick up after it was reported that the Saudi's output dropped from 9.69 million barrels to 9.36 million barrels. There has been some chatter and concern around the scheduled OPEC meeting in November. The concern being that OPEC will push curbing supply to stop the price declines we've seen in recent months. Brent Crude was up 3% on the news, the highest its been in 4 months.

However, despite the OPEC chatter, the Saudi's have said they will keep output at scheduled high levels even with lower pricing to maintain market share. Additionally, reportedly only a small number of members have suggested supply curbing.

Thursday we saw ULSD settle out to erase most of Wednesdays drop - Wednesday it closed down -.0136 to 2.4586, and Thursday settled out at 2.4703 (+.0117). Gas not only erased Wednesday's 3 cent drop, but rebounded up +.0622 for the day to 2.2109. This morning, ULSD is trending up about a penny/penny and a half, while gas is hanging in the +.005 range, both having backed off earlier jumps.

So what's going on?

EIA weekly petroleum report showed inventory gains across the board.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced this morning it was downgrading its outlook for Global growth in the wake of disappointing growth in the Euro Zone and Japan. This is the third time this year the IMF has revised its outlook down (this time to 3.3% from 3.8%) and out of the last twelve forecasts in the past 3 years, they've revised 9 of the estimates down. According to Fox News, the IMF consistently has based projections off of an assumption that wealthier nations would be able to reverse their high debt, high unemployment environments a lot faster than they have been.

The IMF's gloomy outlook on the Euro Zone and bleak projections for growth potential in emerging markets has been another force behind the rally of the US dollar, as the US economy has started to stabilize versus other major nations, especially France and Germany. Germany hit a record 5 year low on industrial production, not good considering they are one of the critical economic players in the zone. 

Continuing fallout over the downed Malaysian jetliner led to increased international tensions today (deja vu?). Russia called US accusations that it supplied the anti aircraft missles responsible "groundless". President Obama insisted that Russian involvement warranted further sanctions by Western nations. And thats what we saw happen this afternoon - Canada issued new sanctions targeting financial and energy related companies (much like the US sanctions from last week) and instituted travel bans on certain individuals.