Crude oil benchmarks bounced higher at midday Tuesday after an overnight session that was mostly a struggle.
West Texas Intermediate slipped as low as $67.72/bbl in the early morning, but it was right around $69/bbl, up 63cts, as many East Coast traders paused for lunch. Meanwhile, Brent fell to $71.53/bbl overnight but bounced up to $72.65/bbl at midday, reflecting an increase of 51cts on the day.
Items cited for the rally included an advance in the value of the dollar, Russian warships spotted off the Syrian coast, and uncertainty about an ongoing meeting of some OPEC countries.
Products futures rose almost commensurately with crude. January RBOB was up 1.86cts at $1.9711/gal and January ULSD moved up 1.90cts to $2.2055/gal.
Cash markets for products were also higher and some futures historians are wondering whether the September lows for ULSD and RBOB may prove to be the annual lows. Recent history suggests problems for both contracts in mid-December, but there's the possibility of some traders getting ahead of the bottom-to-top cycle that generally creates upward pressure on values into the first and second quarters.
Meanwhile, retail gas prices as charted by OPIS and AAA have slipped below $3.01/gal, but the median price is $2.899/gal and the most common price is $2.799/gal. If you remove California from the calculus, the average for the rest of the country is well below $3/gal.
In natural gas, prices continue to recede after a mid-autumn rally. The National Weather Service is predicting widespread above-average temperatures in its 8-14 Day Outlook, which is not conducive to consumption of natural gas or heating oil in the U.S.
This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
--Reporting by Tom Kloza, tkloza@opisnet.com; Editing by Michael Kelly, mkelly@opisnet.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
12-10-24 1300ET
