Price changes for Thursday, September 20, 2018

Hi to all,

Here’s what I have for this week’s price changes:

*Heating and stove oils show a decrease of 1.4 cents a litre.

*Diesel shows a drop of 1.2 cents a litre.

*Gasoline shows a drop of 6/10ths of a cent a litre.

Market highlights

U.S inventory data shows a little good news

At a time when there started to be some concern for rising distillate prices, there is finally good news that consumers have been waiting for: A gain in distillate inventories.

     With the onset of the fall season just around the corner, distillate prices for heating, stove oil and Diesel all took a drop at the time of year they always rise.

     But it was the startling figure of a 6.2 million barrel gain in inventories for distillates that influenced a larger than expected drop in these fuels this week as any gain in inventories this time of year would be a positive for consumers.

     Gasoline also showed a gain in inventories of 1.3 million barrels.

     Crude oil showed a loss of 5.3 million barrels on 97.6 percent refiner capacity.

$80 U.S versus trade wars

Saudi Arabia has put word out in the markets that they “would be happy to see prices for oil over $80 U.S”.

       But will that stick?...

      The signals from the Middle East country helped spark oil prices late today as oil prices rose, but later lost some of those gains.

      Concerns still mount as  to where oil prices are headed as this person sees some volatility ahead with no clear direction in pricing. An ongoing tariff “back and forth” between China and the U.S sees the possibility of China facing a slowing economy as U.S gets set to add more tariffs to Chinese imports. That means less demand for a country that is a huge factor in determination of world crude prices.

      And while all this goes on, Iran still exports product to China while the Chinese have placed tariffs on U.S crude oil coming into its borders. If China still remains as a major customer of Iran, then could we be looking at a failure in part of sanctions placed by the U.S?

That’s it for this week!

Regards,

George Murphy

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyOil