MARKET WATCH: Energy prices continue to waffle
Energy prices continued to waffle with both crude and natural gas futures contracts posting losses Feb. 15 in the New York market, but North Sea Brent crude was less affected.
Nevertheless, Marc Ground at Standard New York Securities Inc., the Standard Bank Group, said, “A rosier demand outlook has kept interest in oil markets alive. Strong crude oil imports from China and last week’s demand outlooks from the Energy Information Administration and from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have lent support to the view of a tightening market. Coupled with the inability of increasing US supply to gain access to the global oil market, we would concur that prices could remain relatively sticky.”
On the other hand, he said the geopolitical risk premium added to crude prices likely will decline if tensions are reduced in the Middle East and North Africa.
Energy prices
The March contract for benchmark US light, sweet crudes lost $1.45 to $95.86/bbl Feb. 15 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The April contract dropped $1.49 to $96.41/bbl. On the US spot market, West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla., was down $1.45 to match the $95.86/bbl close of the front-month futures contract.
Heating oil for March delivery declined 1.33¢ to $3.21/gal on NYMEX. Reformulated stock for oxygenate blending for the same month continued climbing, however, up 1.79¢ to $3.13/gal.
The March natural gas contract decreased 1¢ to $3.15/MMbtu on NYMEX. On the US spot market, gas at Henry Hub, La., fell 7.9¢ to $3.21/MMbtu.
In London, the April IPE contract for North Sea Brent was down 34¢ to $117.66/bbl. Gas oil for March lost $8.25 to $1,003/tonne.
The average price for OPEC’s basket of 12 benchmark crudes dropped 44¢ to $114.23/bbl. So far this year, OPEC’s basket price has averaged $110.80/bbl.
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.