Slight increases for crude and product led to guarded optimism about the direction of futures. There was hope that the EU could somehow help Greece and this led to a fall in the dollar and a rise in commodities. Also helping crude's climb was the cold, stormy weather in the South and the mid-Atlantic. We don't use heating oil here in the mid-South but Jonesboro schools were closed today and will be closed tomorrow. The 12 inches we had 10 days ago had all but been washed away by rain and now we will probably accumulate about 8-10 inches today and tomorrow.
Spring and summer driving season is not that far off and refiners must begin planning production slates and plan on refining more gasoline but it is hard to determine how much gasoline sales to plan on when demand has been so weak. Crack spreads are bad and buying high now would make things worse. Inventory reports are due Wednesday but the storm may delay the release of the numbers.
Today crude +$0.65 to $71.81, gasoline + 1.25 cents to $1.8945, distillate +0.48 cents to $1.8819. Street prices dropped 2 cents from yesterday to $2.229.
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