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
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