Energy Market Updates

There is light on the horizon. It finally appears that the Northeast is making its way out of the longest severe cold stretch in over 10 years. Not to mention some heavy snow accumulations throughout the region. During this period we saw Natgas spike forcing most power plants into curtailment relying upon fuel oils to produce electricity, terminal ports needing ice breaking ships to allow offloading of product, four hour loading lines at terminals, and every fill cap north of Baltimore frozen. Lingering effects persist with Kero pricing remaining very high as seasonal stocks start to dwindle. With the predicted warm up, we hope to see some return to normalcy in the next few days.

Well, it’s official. The northeast has completed the coldest 20 day stretch since 2015. And like the Patriots returning to the Super Bowl, it’s not over yet! And I was mocked at a 12-5 prediction…

Distillate pricing now sits almost $.60 more than the first of the month. A dramatic rise fueled by renewed pressure on Iran, Cold covering half the country, a massive east coast storm and a surprise pause in Interest rates.

My mother always said “some things are better left unsaid”.  Topics like Religion, your In-laws cooking, or desire to annex Greenland.  Typical stuff.  As the week started,...

It has been yet another bizarre week in the fuel world, although we are relatively numb to the bizarre.  Almost two weeks after the removal of the former Venezuelan dictator, markets jumped roughly $.20 as focus shifted to the next crisis, Iran.   One would have thought we would see some additional downside or at least a calm period as the US tries to figure out its restructure plan for Venezuela.   

The period between Christmas and New Years is historically a calm one in the fuel markets. Traders tend to balance out positions, end user demand dips with time of and...

It is very rare to see the markets drop going in to a long weekend. Wednesdays dip capped off a six day free fall for diesel pricing that saw roughly $.25 get erased,...

Once again we ended last week with a nice correction only to give it all back so far this week.  Again finding ourselves smack dab in the middle of the summer range.  Forward looking sentiment appears to have fully accepted we might be in for a bear run soon.  A start to an Israeli-Hamas peace deal looks to be on the horizon.  A mixed bag of Inventory data this week that is likely to be corrected due to the shutdown-Distillate demand strangely jumped almost 8% over last year.

Diesel futures remain on the high side of the summer seasonal range, taking back all of last weeks losses.  Fundamentally, even as demand saw a little bit of a boost this past week, if you strip out exports (implied demand),  we are still well below last years figures.  Gasoline, while slightly more stable, is still soft on a national level.  The inelasticity of gasoline (people need gas to commute daily) tends to be overlooked more than Diesel as it has a direct relationship to the health of the overall economy.  If folks aren’t buying diesel, trucks aren’t running.   

Diesel futures continue to be stuck in this $.20 range since mid-summer, with it’s cousin Gasoline in the same funk. Economic policy and factors appear to be the driving...