MARKET WATCH: Energy prices mixed ahead of Easter holiday
Energy prices were mixed Mar. 28, with front-month crude still climbing but petroleum products and natural gas prices down on the New York market.
As for the broader market, analysts in the Houston office of Raymond James & Associates Inc. reported, “In a holiday-shortened week, the bull market continued as strong economic data and optimism on the Cyprus bailout spurred the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to an all-time high 3 weeks after the Dow Jones Industrial Index achieved the same feat.” Energy stocks also were up with the Oil Service Index and the SIG Oil Exploration & Production Index gaining overall through the week. Raymond James analysts said front-month crude and natural gas contracts “both rallied 3%” for the week.
“With the psychological milestone of benchmark index record-highs in the rearview mirror, should we now expect a pullback? The US jobs report on [Apr. 5] will certainly provide a clue,” they said.
“Not even North Korea's threats to attack the global finance hub of Austin, Tex., could sour the market's mood last week,” Raymond James analysts noted. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un ordered his country’s rockets on combat-ready status at the end of last week, and a photo released by state-run media of a “strike plan” chart of US targets included the Texas capital Austin along with Los Angeles and other large cities.
Equity stocks, crude, and natural gas prices were down in early trading Apr. 1 after the Institute for Supply Management reported its manufacturing index dropped to 51.3 in March from 54.2 in February. Economists previously expected the index to dip to 54.
Energy prices
The May and June contracts for benchmark US light, sweet crudes each increased 65¢ to $97.23/bbl and $97.49/bbl respectively Mar. 28 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The market was closed Mar. 29 in observation of Good Friday ahead of the Easter weekend. On the US spot market, West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla., was up 65¢ to match the front-month futures closing of $97.23/bbl.
The expiring heating oil contract for April dipped 0.02¢ but closed essentially unchanged at $2.92/gal on NYMEX. Reformulated stock for oxygenate blending for the same month slipped 1.01¢ to $3.11/gal.
The May natural gas contract fell 4.4¢ to $4.02/MMbtu on NYMEX. On the US spot market, gas at Henry Hub, La., declined 0.9¢ but was virtually unchanged at a rounded $4.06/MMbtu.
In London, the May IPE contract for North Sea Brent gained 33¢ to $110.02/bbl. Gas oil for April advanced by $4.75 to $915.50/tonne.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ Vienna office was closed Mar. 29 and Apr. 1, so there were no price updates for OPEC’s basket of 12 benchmark crudes.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected].
About the Author
Sam Fletcher
Senior Writer
I'm third-generation blue-collar oil field worker, born in the great East Texas Field and completed high school in the Permian Basin of West Texas where I spent a couple of summers hustling jugs and loading shot holes on seismic crews. My family was oil field trash back when it was an insult instead of a brag on a bumper sticker. I enlisted in the US Army in 1961-1964 looking for a way out of a life of stoop-labor in the oil patch. I didn't succeed then, but a few years later when they passed a new GI Bill for Vietnam veterans, they backdated it to cover my period of enlistment and finally gave me the means to attend college. I'd wanted a career in journalism since my junior year in high school when I was editor of the school newspaper. I financed my college education with the GI bill, parttime work, and a few scholarships and earned a bachelor's degree and later a master's degree in mass communication at Texas Tech University. I worked some years on Texas daily newspapers and even taught journalism a couple of semesters at a junior college in San Antonio before joining the metropolitan Houston Post in 1973. In 1977 I became the energy reporter for the paper, primarily because I was the only writer who'd ever broke a sweat in sight of an oil rig. I covered the oil patch through its biggest boom in the 1970s, its worst depression in the 1980s, and its subsequent rise from the ashes as the industry reinvented itself yet again. When the Post folded in 1995, I made the switch to oil industry publications. At the start of the new century, I joined the Oil & Gas Journal, long the "Bible" of the oil industry. I've been writing about the oil and gas industry's successes and setbacks for a long time, and I've loved every minute of it.