Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Price changes for Thursday, November 5th, 2015

Good evening!

Final numbers are in and they still show more of an increase than yesterday's alert, so please forward to all your friends!

Here's what I have for this week's price changes, keeping in mind the winter heating and diesel fuel blends that may show off a little on accuracy!

Heating oil shows an increase of 1.4 cents a litre.
Stove oil also shows an increase of 1.4 cents.
Diesel fuel shows an increase of 2.3 cents a litre, and...
Gasoline shows an added 3.3 cents a litre.

Rise in crude oil pushes up prices for consumers and refined products
 
"There's good news in rising crude oil prices for some out there, but consumers aren't going to enjoy an upwards adjustment to prices for the refined products this week when the PUB releases the numbers Wednesday at midnight!" That's according to George Murphy, group researcher for the Consumer Group for Fair Gas Prices.

"Over the past week, I've seen a rough $4 US increase to both West Texas Intermediate and Brent crudes that I track. What's upsetting here is that refined commodity prices have risen sharply along with them, showing consumers will be getting hit along the way," Murphy said. "Consumers will notice the increased price of gasoline and Diesel fuels this week.

Market news
"The news from the markets doesn't seem to show any justification for the increase in refined products. Refineries are coming back online, with the latest figures showing a mere 800K barrels of refining capacity now offline with winter maintenance. With almost a million barrels per day back online, you should see at least that much gasoline being added to inventories. Demand still remains down, and speculators are betting on an increase in crude oil products when the Energy Information Administration releases the latest data 12 noon, Newfoundland time.

OPEC itself shows no signs of cutting back with the member nations producing 32.2 million barrels a day in October. Russian production also increased last month to 10.8 million barrels a day. There's no sign of a drop in worldwide production, so why are crude oil prices rising? Iran is also set to add more to the markets with the country making a formal announcement December 4th, that they will be making a boost in production. Some are saying that Iran will add an immediate 700,000 barrels to the daily market from their present 2.7 million in October, with at least 40 million barrels in what is known as "floating storage".

Refining shows best profit in years
News from the markets also is showing why it is good to be a refiner these days, and may reflect on how well our own North Atlantic refinery may be performing. Latest figure I have works out to a profit of a rough $16 Canadian a barrel. That's about $1.68 million per day out of Placentia Bay, based on the latest figures I was able to acquire from the southern US refiner. But let there be no mistake why a truly integrated oil company is making money now, as well as refiners: Crude acquisition costs are well down with the crash in oil, and it's there that they've been making some good dollars!

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For more information, contact;

George
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA

2 comments:

nyi said...

OK, so tell me this. You have said in the past that crude prices does not directly affect the price at the pump; at least when the prices were sliding. Now that you say there is a sharp increase then the cost at the pumps will be felt by consumers. So PLEASE tell me which is it? Are fuel prices ONLY affected when crude rises. This is getting COMPLETELY out of hand, as the reasons/execuses for fuel price adjustments are completely all over the map.

George said...

It's the fact that this week saw an increase in spot prices to refined products too that will hit consumers. Usually unrelated, but with 3.3 million barrel drop in gasoline inventories recorded this last week, it may be signaling a slight increase in demand. That's the only thing I can attribute it to. The Canadian dollar lost maybe a penny over the last week, but I can't attribute that to this week's showing of an increase.

When you see crude slide, the dollar generally does as well. But when it climbs as it did last week, usually you see the dollar gain here, but it didn't.

Only other factor that I didn't report on this week was a market conversation over the possibility of interest rate increases, which spooked oil down today, but posted gains in the US dollar, dropping oil prices.

Hope this helps?

George