Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Price changes for Thursday, February 26, 2015

Updated numbers for Thursday, February 26th price changes:

Heating and stove oils to add 4.08 cents a litre.
Diesel fuel to add 6.4 cents a litre, and...
Gasoline to add 1.4 cents a litre.

If there's any good news out of this, it's that after today's trading, we should be back at seeing a drop in prices to diesel and heating oils next week. Spot prices returned today to "pre-runup" levels. They retreated today by about 25 cents a US gallon. I guess the speculators decided to get out before the latest word on inventories building tomorrow.

If you have enough to go it until next week, then you might want to hold off until then. You're also a little better off if you got the phone-call in before the price is due to increase midnight tomorrow.

The Canadian dollar mostly held steady as compared to the previous session. Last week also saw the total rig count remain mostly steady, which leads me to believe that smaller producers are seeing a flattening out of prices and are getting set to "explore" again. I'll keep watching that one.

Anyway, word is to hold off again for another week if you can at all do it to see what happens with the "retreat" next week.

Pass the word!

Regards,

George Murphy
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Price changes for Thursday, February 19, 2015

Final numbers are in for this week, and yes, increases across the board again.
Here's what I have:

Heating and stove oils show an added 3.49 cents a litre.
Diesel shows up by 4.4 cents a litre, and...
Gasoline shows another increase, by 2.6 cents a litre.

Libyan production is almost shut in again with revolution there the order of the day. That's helped increase Brent crude prices almost $7 US a barrel this week alone, and since the last price setting.
West Texas Intermediate prices are up as well, this time by $4 US as rigs come off-line from the fracking fields. There's been a steady drop in drilling over the past couple of weeks. However, keep in mind that a lot of these wells have already been drilled and are producing, so, I would expect to see continued building of overall US domestic production.

What has helped increase oil prices are some worldwide disruptions in production, in particular Libya, but also some drop in OPEC production, but only slightly. I'll have a look at the latest US inventory reports either tomorrow or Thursday when they are next published.

Keep an eye to the oil markets tomorrow (Wednesday) and see if traders are also thinking of the possibility of the US reporting further inventory building this last week!

A last point: It seems US producers are going to have another problem. Simple really, but it seems that they're actually starting to run out of room to put their oil once they get it out of the ground. It's a problem that most OPEC countries have had in a while. OPEC producers reportedly have close on 130 million barrels in "floating storage" right now. The US projection is for them to have all available storage space to be taken up as of the end of June.

We're not quite out of the woods with oil prices yet...

That's it for now!

Regards,

George Murphy
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Price changes for Thursday, February 12, 2015



Hi to all,

Numbers are in for this Thursday's price changes. Here's what I have:

Heating and stove oils are up by four cents a litre.
Diesel prices to increase by 4.5 cents, and...
Gasoline shows an increase of 2.6 cents at the pumps.

Slightly off from what was predicted for gasoline last week, but all up just the same. Keep in mind as well that the numbers for both heating oil and Diesel may be off somewhat due to the winter blending mix…
 
Oil trading up all this week didn't help the situation any as the Canadian dollar lost most gains from earlier this session. Right back to where we were last week. In the meantime, over the past week, Brent crude gained about $4 US before a slight retreat today.

Most of today's drop in oil prices is directly concerned with speculators thinking that there are still worries over "over-supply" in the markets. They're anticipating that the US inventory reports out of the Energy Information Administration will show builds in overall crude oil inventory. Hopefully, gains in inventory will also be made to refined products as well to "head off" the latest increases in heating and other fuel prices next week!

That report will be out around noon our time on Wednesday. I’ll tweet the numbers they find later tomorrow, so you might want to follow me there...

That’s it for now,

Regards,

George Murphy
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Price changes for this week. Projections for next!

Hi to all,

Final numbers for this week's price changes are in, but I also have projected increases for next week that I'm watching. What I have done here is give you this week's increase, but on the same line, give you what I think will happen with prices for next week as well. You'll find that number at the tail end of each fuel price change I give you and in (parentheses).


Here's what I have:

Heating and stove oils show an increase of 2.45 cents a litre. (4.46c/Lt for next week projection)
Diesel shows an added 3.3 cents a litre. (5.1 cents next week)
Gasoline shows an increase of 4.5 cents a litre. (4.6 cents for next week)

These numbers I have projected for next week's price changes are based simply on the difference I have between my spot average for this week, and the spot price at market close for today. If nothing changes in the markets with refined prices from today, then these numbers should run close to what will actually happen next week.

Again, feel free to pass this around to everyone on your friends lists. Keep in mind the winter blending of diesel and heating oils. Those numbers may be off somewhat.

A strike by some US refinery workers has taken some 10 percent of refining capacity offline. That may be part reason why refined commodity prices have experienced the run-up that they have. Add to that, the effect of a lower Canadian dollar against it's US cousin, and we have the recipe for a rapid increase to Canadian consumer prices.

Both Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate crude have increased roughly $9 US a barrel over the last regulation period of seven days.

See you at the pumps!

Regards,

George Murphy
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA