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Fuel prices sit about $.30 higher today than the beginning of the month as we broke out of the comfortable range in MAY through JUNE. The three week rally can mainly be tied to production cuts, unpredictable inventory reports and mostly an optimistic view on the overall health of the US economy. The bright side is we are over $1.00 lower than this time last year. The question remains, does this rally have any legs?
Prices have been trending upward this week, largely based on OPEC following through on production cuts. Namely, we saw a drop in output of around 800K bpd in January by its member nations. This would seem to indicate that the so called "OPEC+ deal" to cut output and thus global oversupply is actually being followed, and it appears it is starting to have the desired effect - stabilizing prices higher than we have seen over the past year or so.
Today, the NYMEX continued it's winning streak - At the end of the day, we settled up across the board yet again, with Crude settling out at $48.75/bbl (+1.7%), ULSD climbed +.0268 to $1.5953 and RBOB edged up +.02111 to $1.6173.
The speculators jumped on the buying train as soon as trading opened Sunday evening and we saw RBOB jump to as high as 3.2050 (+.1250)before cooling off ahead of open outcry. The Explosion at the 650k bpd Amuay refinery in Venezuela is said to have caused at least 25 deaths and substantial damage to the surround area. With all the devastation, the unit is said to be back online by the end of the week. This facility is said to supply roughly 360 bpd of gasolines to the east coast. Additionally, the threat of Hurricane Isaac to the Gulf region has skyrocketed RBOB values. The storm, expected to make landfall sometime Tuesday evening, appears to be taking the same path as Rita and Katrina. This time however, it is much smaller in size and most offshore rigs have been evacuated and shutdown. The key to remember about storms is while it does take product off the market, it also reduces demand. The fact that HEAT finished marginally higher is a big win for Bears, considering it was up over .07 at one point. At the Close, Crude actually closed down .68 to $95.47, HO was up .0017 to $3.1118 and RBOB jumped .0768 to $3.1548.
Speaking with an associate today we were amazed to both discover that last year at this time we over 40 cents less than now. But that is ancient history. Today continued...