Price changes for Thursday, July 31, 2014

Hi to all,

Been really busy, so, excuse the lateness of this...

Public Accounts Committee work and constituency matters have to come first, after all...lol

Here's what I have for this Thursday's price changes. Keep in mind that my margin for error is 3/10ths of a cent +/-

Heating and stove oils show an added 1.58 cents a litre on the way.
Diesel shows an added 1.9 cents a litre, and...
Gasoline shows just 2/10ths of a cent increase at the pumps.

The increase in Middle east violence deserves some watching, but still hasn't affected oil prices to the point of increasing them. Refined commodities are up slightly on investors looking forward to the winter heating season. That's why you see Diesel up as well, being part of that same distillate group of fuels.
Gasoline mostly steady as a result of continued bullish increases in inventory. I believe that consumers are still upset with the high prices we have been seeing still, and they should be!

The Canadian dollar has also lost some ground against the US dollar over the last week. Worrisome maybe, but for every penny we lose against the US greenback, we lose a penny at the pumps. We lost a clear penny since last Tuesday's measure.

I'll keep it at that this week, but if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note!

Regards to all,

George Murphy
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA 

Price changes for Thursday, July 24, 2014

Hi to all,

All numbers are in, and, as I said earlier, don't expect much in the way of price changes.
Here's what I have for this Thursday:

Heating and stove oils to increase by just 4/100ths of a cent.
Diesel to increase by 3/100ths of a cent, and...
Gasoline to drop a half penny.

My margin for error is 3/10ths, so take it from there. No panic this week!

At least we won't see a wild increase. Fourth week in a row to see a drop in gasoline prices, as little as it might be.

Highlights
The Canadian dollar remained relatively steady against its US counterpart with the Canuck Buck averaging $1.074 against the US currency.

The price of oil gained an average of $3 US on the markets as continuing violence in the Middle East as well as the diplomatic tension created with the crash of Malaysia 17 in the Ukraine. Some fears in the markets are mostly centered around Brent prices as Europe is heavily dependent upon Russian exports of oil as well as natural gas through the Ukraine region. As you can tell by the numbers in the price changes, there was little effect on spot prices, which remained relatively steady on the refined spot markets.

That’s it for this week!

Regards,

George Murphy
Twitter: @GeorgeMurphyMHA

Price changes for Thursday, July 17th, 2014

Hi to everyone,

Here's what I have for this Thursday's price changes:

Heating and stove oils to drop by just 81/100ths of a cent a litre.
Diesel to drop by 1.1 cents a litre, and...
Gasoline to drop by 1.6 cents a litre.

The Canadian dollar dropped a penny on average against the US greenback over this pricing session. That, in essence, cost consumers a rough penny in the numbers. While they're all down, the numbers give you a sense of how the Canadian dollar is so tied to raw export of resources. Not only do we ship out jobs, but it cost us to do it. In this case, while the price of oil has slipped some this past week, the support for the dollar has weakened as a result.

So endeth the economic lesson for today!

We can enjoy the lower price anyway, but at a cost...

Regards,

George Murphy
Twitter: @GeorgeMurphyMHA 

Price Changes for July 10, 2014

Hi to all,

Here's what I have for this week's changes. Looks like we can keep some "klink" in our pockets at the end of the week!

Heating and stove oils show a drop of 2.92 cents a litre on the way.
Diesel shows a drop of 2.7 cents a litre, and...
Gasoline shows a drop of 1.7 cents a litre.

Libyan exports have started, and that's added close to another 560,000 barrels of Brent crude to the markets. While oil prices declined, it seemed that attacks by the ISIS militants has not affected any exports from Iraq as well.

Good news for further exports entering the markets, and the more available out there, the less problems getting hold of the stuff.

The only downside here is that while prices for oil are slipping, the Canadian dollar is starting to lose a little ground against the US dollar. In other words, while prices decline, they may slow...

That's it for this week!

Regards to all,

George Murphy
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA

Price changes for Thursday, July 3, 2014

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Here's what I have for this Thursday's price changes.

Heating and stove oils show a drop of 2.52 cents a litre.
Diesel shows a drop of 3.1 cents a litre on the way, and...
Gasoline also shows a drop of 2.4 cents a litre.

Numbers were a little off last week, so, either way, they will still be down. I missed some market volatility at the tail end of last week's session.

In spite of ongoing violence in Iraq, markets showed a modest "retreat" because of bad economic data, showing that the US economy still has some improvement to do before things are straight. The biggest news showed gasoline demand had dropped close on four percentage points as compared to the same time-frame last year. That speaks volumes about what consumers are still thinking about prices at the pumps.

If there's any bad news in the numbers, it's still the fact that there has been only about a four cent drop in heating and stove oil prices since January's numbers. That doesn't say a lot about heating and stove oil prices getting any cheaper before winter. Still a ways to go yet before I can call the shot on what to expect for the winter, but it doesn't look any better than last year right now.

Feel free to share this message!

That's it for this week!

Regards to all,

George Murphy
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA 

P.S There's a new law coming into effect having to do with "spamming" that I'll have to look into. Apparently, one has to be asked to subscribe all over again in order to "get permission" to send this to everyone. I'll have to check into the effects on an auto-send feature such as this blog has, so, if you don't want to get this blog-post via your email again, please feel free to use the "unsubscribe" feature on the email you receive!...