Lacking New News, Markets Stay Elevated
Oil prices swung higher on Friday, helping crude eke out a minor weekly gain of 18 cents. This morning, crude prices are relatively calm, barely moving from Friday’s closing price. WTI crude is currently $73.69, down just 11 cents since Friday.
Fuel prices are showing significantly higher gains this morning. Diesel prices are racing higher this morning, picking up 3.3 cents (1.5%) to trade at $2.2011. Gasoline prices are also soaring, trading at $2.1442, a gain of 3.6 cents (1.7%).
Market moving news has been light over the weekend. Syncor announced plans to bring part of its Canadian Syncrude operation back online by the end of July, with about 150 kbpd resuming operations. The rest of Syncrude’s 360 kbpd facility will be offline until early August or September. Libya also continues to experience export reductions due to the closure of key exporting ports. Markets are eagerly waiting to see how Saudi Arabia and Russia – the only OPEC producers with spare capacity – will handle these unexpected outages that come on top of major losses in Iranian and Venezuelan oil output.
Rig counts were up in last Friday’s reports from Bakers Hughes, likely a response to significantly higher oil prices than we’ve seen lately. The previous two weeks of rig count data had shown sequential losses in counts. As oil prices rise, producers are incentivized to bring more production online, which subsequently results in more supply and tempered prices.
Tropical Storm Chris
Tropical Storm Chris is currently located well off the coast of the Carolina’s. It is expected to strengthen to a category 1 hurricane in the next 24 hours. At the current time, the storm is not forecast to make landfall in the U.S., but Mansfield’s supply team will keep monitoring the storm and will provide updates as needed.
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