Author: johnkilduff

Oil prices are having difficulty making further gains or are well-supported, depending on your perspective and/or portfolio. Since nearing $108, prices have churned between 104 and 106. Support has come from more refinery snags, and selling pressure has come from profit-taking and soft economic data out of China, save for the implied crude oil demand figures.… Read more

For all the focus, recently, on surging shale oil production in the US and record inventories from the Cushing bottleneck, the surge in demand was somehow overlooked. US refining activity, in particular, has surged to 92% of capacity, the highest in quite some time.… Read more

The reportage is ablaze with stories of soaring crude oil and gasoline prices. The gasoline price jump is startling. Yesterday morning, driving down a major highway in New Jersey, there was retail pump price differences of upwards of 30-40 cents! Obviously, the higher priced stations had gotten a delivery that morning, while other stations were still selling lower-priced leftovers from earlier in the week.… Read more

WTI prices quit the rally party, yesterday, and fell from nearly $108 per barrel. The trading posted a wide-range, but it just missed posting an outside day with a lower close, which would have signaled a key reversal. Despite the failure to generate that signal, prices appear to have put in an intermediate top.… Read more

WTI prices rallied further, yesterday, operating in their own world, detached from apparent economic weakness in China and a strong US dollar. The EIA confirmed the massive drawdown in crude oil inventories that was first reported by the API Tuesday night.… Read more

WTI is in full rally mode. If geopolitics were not enough of a factor, plunging inventories in the US , overall, and Cushing, OK, in particular are doing the trick. The market even experienced a BP-Horizon-like scare last night, when “news” hit that an explosion at an offshore rig occurred and that a large sheen of oil was spotted in the waters nearby.… Read more

The recall movement in Egypt has added about five dollars to the geopolitical premium in oil prices. Given what it took for the people to rise up and try to throw the bums out, it seems a misnomer to refer to it as a coup d’etat.… Read more

The overall rally in crude oil prices has been impressive, in its own right, but the collapse in Brent’s premium to WTI has been spectacular. This morning, it has fallen below $5.00. A lot of people roll their eyes when energy economists and analysts remind everyone that the best cure for high prices is high prices.… Read more

Oil prices are on the rise this morning, despite some soft economic data out of China. The first days of a new quarter often rallies generated by new money going to work in long-only index funds. This phenomenon may be exaggerated this time around, due to some fallow dollars, refugees from bond funds, taking a turn at oil.… Read more

WTI crude oil will finish the first-half of the year about three dollars higher than where it began the year. It did lurch 10 dollars down and promptly reverse about 15 dollars higher, so the three dollar change took a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and, possibly, a career or two.… Read more