Price changes for Thursday, September 19th, 2019

Hi to all,



Here’s what I have for this week’s price changes in what has been one of the most remarkable weeks I’ve seen in oil in a very long time!



*Heating and stove oil shows an increase of 1.3 cents a litre.

*Diesel fuel shows an increase of 1.6 cents a litre, and...

*Gasoline shows a DROP of one cent.





Market highlights



It’s all Saudi Arabia and Iran folks!

Attacks against the Abqaiq production facility and the Khurais oil field were successful in knocking out 5.7 million barrels of production out of 9.8 million that was online.

     The Saudi’s have almost 12 million barrels a day of processing at its fingertips that was already shut down and mothballed because of OPEC cuts. Surprisingly, the cut to production has not affected fuel prices as much as was first thought they would be.

     While important infrastructure is already well on its way to returning to normal, the Saudi’s are saying by the start of November before capacity is back to the original 12 million barrels of production a day. Some of that was already in mothball as a result of past production cuts.

     UN investigators are said to be on the way to investigate the damage to Saudi facilities, and that itself may be enough to dissuade the U.S from taking any preliminary action or military intervention with Iran, who are being blamed by the U.S for the attacks.

     Houthi from Yemen have claimed responsibility and promised in a statement yesterday that more attacks are imminent, so, we may not be out of the woods on this situation yet.



Local effect

As regards to what NL consumers will see this week and next is probably all going to be determined by market factors over the next week. Projections are panning out a little lower than forecast a day ago. Right now, numbers are showing possible increases right across the board of 2.3 for heating, 1.8 on Diesel and 2.2 up for gasoline as a result of elevated spot prices.

     Hopefully, with any retreat in oil and refined product prices the next couple of days, these projections will turn around and show a drop in prices rather than any possible increase to consumers!



That’s it for this week!



Regards,



George Murphy

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyOil