Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Price changes for Thursday, November 26th, 2020

 

Hi to all,

 

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

 

*Heating and stove oil to increase by 2.3 cents a litre.

*Diesel to increase by 2.6 cents a litre, and...

*Gasoline to increase by 1.5 cents a litre.

 

Market highlights

 

Covid-19 vaccines continue to power the markets

It’s all about “anticipated demand” as markets reacted heavily to more Covid-19 vaccine talk this week with the latest announcement by AstraZeneca.

     Oil responded as anticipated demand was seen with any vaccine availability with talk in the US that the vaccinations there could begin as soon as the first week in December.

 

Yellen as Biden’s Chair of the Federal Reserve

Joe Biden is not quite the US President yet, but his appointment of Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve yesterday was also seen to power up the markets.

     Yellen was chair of the reserve appointed under Barrack Obama, but was not reappointed by Trump when her term expired in 2018. She headed up defense of the stimulus packages into the US economy during Obama’s tenure, so her appointment signals a possible return of a stimulus program in January to aid in any economic recovery.

 

Soon time to give back?

Watching spot prices this week made me turn my eyes back to March when markets collapsed and spot prices retreated on lower oil and demand from consumers.

     It may be slightly early, but spot prices are just five cents a litre lower than where they were “pre-collapse” in March for heating oil and six cents off the mark for gasoline.

      If I may be too presumptuous to ask, at what point do we as consumers get our money back from the approved increase given by the Public Utilities Board to carry NARL through this “crisis”? Surely, refining margins have improved markedly over the past two weeks, enough to “consider” a re-start of the refinery.

 

US inventory data

The latest inventory data shows yet another rare increase in oil inventories with crude stocks rising by 800,000 barrels.

     Gasoline increased by 2.6 million barrels, while distillates dropped 5.2 million barrels.

      Refiner capacity increased to 77.4 percent, up from last week.

      US domestic production was reported at 10.9 million barrels a day, up 400,000 barrels a day over the last week, possibly signalling a return of production.

       Although down by two rigs this past week, there were 310 rigs operating in North America, up from last month’s 293.

 

That’s it for this week!

 

Regards,

 

George Murphy

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyOil  

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