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Last month, the OPEC+ decision to stay the course on previously announced production cuts pushed the market up. Yesterday, the OPEC+ decision to reverse course and bring more supply online over the next 3 months (May, June, July) resulted in....surprise! The market going up!
Today we opened up slightly on the NYMEX, and the big drops kicked in around 11am, (up to almost 3% on WTI temporarily) when Speaker Pelosi announced that they expected "pen on paper" for a second round of stimulus packages. The announcement came as somewhat of a surprise, as much of the activity on the second stimulus as of late has involved blocking, show bills, and discussions of everything being postponed until after the Election (and other typical political maneuvering).
Today's EIA Inventory Report indicated that Crude Inventories were up 2.8 million barrels for the week ending October 30th, and the market reacted accordingly. API had forecast a build as well, so prior to the EIA release we were trending down about 1%, which accelerated to over 3% once the official numbers came out.
Stocks are getting pummeled today in anticipation of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's scheduled 5 o'clock speech on the economy and Fed policy re: rate hikes. (Deja vu anyone?).
CRUDE, ULSD, and RBOB are all trending downwards today in tandem with the Stock Market, after a less-than-robust Jobs Report out this morning. The report showed that the US added 173,000 jobs in August, a relatively far cry from the 220,000 anticipated (hoped for?) by the markets and economists.
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 Putin had announced earlier this week that Russian troops had withdrawn from the border, but no such withdrawal happened according to everyone else in the area, so more sanctions are back on the table it appears.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.
Crude - both Brent and WTI - continued to drop today on speculations of another inventory build on tommorows EIA report. According to a Bloomberg survey, tommorows report may show increases of 1.8mbl up to 2.5mbbl. The prior weeks report (the tenth increase in a row) indicated US Crude inventories climbed to 385 million barrels, the highest on hand since November, with PADD 3 numbers (Gulf Coast) hit over 200 million barrels, the highest since 1990.
NYMEX values appeared to find support just above the 2.90 level on front month HO after a long cold stretch. The Polar Vortex that gripped a large portion of the Country, and plagued us in the Northeast with long terminal lines, appears to be subsiding. Many of us are getting a well deserved breather as we return to somewhat normalcy.