Energy Market Updates

After the mulityear lows hit last week, oil started to rally today.

A doubly "Black Friday" this year as OPECs decision resulted in a commodities free fall. The second part is that it was hoped that the relief consumers have been getting at the pump since the summer would have helped boost retail sales for the season. As the numbers are coming in though, it's not looking good.

The market is tanking across the board (and dragging the S&P with it) on the results of the OPEC meeting for November on Wednesday. The meeting officially cemented the long suspected decision by the cartel to keep oil production and output at current levels, despite the crashing prices and global glut of Crude oil. 

Saudi Arabia determined production would remain at current levels - as the largest producer in the group, they essentially set the policy. Several smaller members reportedly wanted to curb supply to raise prices, largely because a huge part of their country's economy runs off of the money generated from oil sales. 

Everything is dropping across the board today - WTI is maintaining itself under the $80 benchmark (currently -1.76 at 78.78/bbl), Gas and ULSD are both down over 5 this morning on the NYMEX and the Dow and Nasdaq are both following suit into the red. 

So whats going on?

Goldman Sachs has revised its projected oil prices for 2015 to $75/bbl for WTI and $85/bbl for Brent Crude, in response to ramped up supplies and slow projected global economic growth. 

Production from the US, Brazil, and the Gulf is projected to increase almost 1 million bpd, combined, and OPEC production is assumed to remain more or less stable - with gains in Iraqi production and drops in Libyan output essentially cancelling one another out. 

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?