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.

(image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Wednesday's EIA report showed that the API projected Crude drops come to fruition, falling 1.78 million barrels. As we all saw this pushed up Crude & ULSD prices on the day, with ULSD closing up .0398 to 2.9275, and Crude up to 100.81, once again hanging by the new (unfortunately) benchmark of $100 we've all been hoping to drop from for quite some time now. 

Brent ticked upwards this week as well on EU discussion of stricter sanctions on Russia. Putin had announced earlier this week that Russian troops had withdrawn from the border, but no such withdrawal happened according to everyone else in the area, so more sanctions are back on the table it appears. Economic sanctions on the world's second largest energy exporter are, unsurprisingly, not great for downward price pressure.