Fuels Market Watch 24

FUEL MARKETS TODAY – Market Overview

Oil prices regained some lost ground at market opening today, but prices quickly subsided. Currently, they are little changed from Friday’s prices. WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude prices in today’s trading session opened at $69.41, a recovery of $0.73 from Friday’s opening price of $68.68/b. Current WTI prices have retreated back below $69/b. Gasoline and diesel futures prices also opened higher this morning, then handed back gains.  

Crude oil and product prices ended last week in the red. On Monday October 15th, WTI futures prices opened at $71.85/b. They closed at $69.12/b on Friday, a loss of $1.35/b, or 1.93%. Diesel futures prices opened on Monday at $2.3323/gallon, and declined to $2.302/gallon on Friday, a drop of 1.65 cents/gallon, or 0.71%. Gasoline futures prices opened at $1.9508/gallon on Monday, falling by 3.42 cents/gallon (1.78%) to close at $1.9139/gallon on Friday. 

Baker Hughes released the weekly active rig count on Friday. The active rig count has risen by twelve over the past two weeks: oil rigs rose from 861 during the week ended October 5th to 873 during the week ended October 19th, while the active gas rig count rose from 189 to 194 over the same two-week period. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that U.S. crude oil production averaged 11,050 kbpd during the first two weeks of October, 25 kbpd higher than September’s average production.  

Saudi Arabia remains in the global spotlight. The government is now calling the killing of Jamal Khashoggi a “huge and grave mistake,” but it maintains that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was not aware nor responsible. Skepticism is widespread. The prospect remains of some sort of sanctions and response when all investigations are completed. However, the Saudi Energy Minister, Khalid al-Falih, calmed oil markets when he responded to questions about the possibility of Saudi Arabia launching an oil embargo on Western consumers like the one unleashed in 1973. The Energy Minister said that Saudi Arabia would isolate oil from politics, and that moderate oil prices were needed to prevent a slowdown in global economic growth and possible recession.