Gasoline And Crude Oil Prices Reached Fresh Multi-Month Highs Friday Morning As News Of The Anticipated Attacks Spread

Buy the rumor, sell the news seems to be the pattern for energy contracts that are heading lower this morning after Iran’s well-telegraphed attack on Israel over the weekend was thwarted by a coalition of air forces and no further escalation has ensued so far.

Gasoline and crude oil prices reached fresh multi-month highs Friday morning as news of the anticipated attacks spread, and those new highs keep the technical outlook pointing higher on the weekly charts, but we’ll need to see a new high set this week or else the argument for the end of the spring rally may begin.

Marathon reported unplanned flaring at the Wilmington section of its Los Angeles area refining complex early this morning, a week after reported issues at the Carson facility, which combined make up the largest refinery in the state. California’s basis values did pull back sharply after a big rally last week, and now we’ll wait to see if this latest upset sends them higher once again.

Money managers continue to act moderately bullish on energy contracts, adding net length across the board last week, even as new short positions were added in most of the contracts.

Perhaps most notable in the COT report last week was a surge in open interest with RBOB gasoline reaching its highest level in 3 years, while Brent crude oil contracts reached their highest levels since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine kicked off more than 2 years ago.

It seems likely that the increased violence around the Middle East, and the attacks on Russian refineries are contributing to the increase in bettors in the energy space, particularly now that margin requirements have returned to more tolerable levels after spiking during the chaotic trading of 2022. This same pattern may also be contributing to the surge in energy company stock prices, even though margins are far below the record-setting levels we saw the prior 2 years.

The big increase in short bets on gasoline last week also suggests that some traders are starting to prepare for the spring peak in prices that often happens in late April or May.

A Reuters report suggests that Russia has been able to repair nearly 1/3 of the refining output that was taken offline due to Ukraine’s drone strikes, bringing the offline capacity to 10% down from 14% at the end of March, but that still means more than 650,000 barrels/day of capacity is offline, roughly the size of the largest refinery in the US.

Baker Hughes reported a drop of 2 oil rigs last week, erasing the increase in the rig count we saw the week before. Natural gas rigs continue to decline, falling by 1 last week to a fresh 2 year low at 109 total for the US. Baker Hughes changed the format of their report a couple of weeks ago, which is still challenging some data providers and analysts who continue to report the last numbers that show up on the old report.

A CNN article over the weekend highlighted the challenges still being faced at the PES refinery outside of Philadelphia nearly 5 years after an explosion knocked that plant offline for good. This type of struggle is one major factor in why some refiners are choosing to convert their facilities to renewables production in recent years, which effectively extends their timeline on any remediation needed if the facility was closed for good.

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