Price changes for Thursday, November 12, 2015

Here's what I have for this week's price changes, keeping in mind that winter blending affects the outcome of numbers for heating oil and diesel fuel because of the addition of jet fuel to their various mixes.

Heating oil shows no change in price.
Stove oil also shows no change in price.
Diesel fuel shows a drop of 3/10ths of a cent a litre, and...
Gasoline shows an increase of 7/10ths of a cent a litre.

Some prices to remain steady this week: Murphy

 

Consumers won't see much in the way of price changes this week as the markets remained relatively steady in trading. That's according to George Murphy, group researcher for the Consumer Group for Fair Gas Prices. As a matter of fact, for some fuels, there won't be any changes.

 

"While West Texas Intermediate saw some retreat in its barrel price, and Brent prices followed WTI down, refined commodity prices remained overall steady as well for the most part, with the exception being a very moderate increase to gasoline spot prices. New York mercantile pricing showed gasoline rising from an average 49.6 cents a litre to 50.3 cents a litre over the last week. This means a slight upwards adjustment maybe seen for gasoline prices to consumers by a slim margin of 7/10ths of a cent based on that activity", Murphy said.

 

"Refineries ran at close to 89 percentage points, a modest increase, but shows refineries are coming back online from winter maintenance schedules. Close on 660,000 barrels a day production remains offline due to that. While there was an addition to crude oil inventories last week, a draw from US gasoline inventories is a sign indicative of lower inputs to refineries as a way to support prices to consumers at the pump. That's a finger pointing at the industry controlling how much gasoline is actually coming into inventories. Why produce a product if no one is buying?

 

"While the International Energy Agency has put the word out on a possible recovery in oil prices, I don't see anywhere in their prediction the fact of how responsive US oil producers can come back online and actually keep that supposed recovery from actually happening. Important to note here is that factor. Far beyond anyone's expectations, the US reached a high of 9.6 million barrels a day almost overnight by oil industry standards. They keep forgetting that producers will respond quite readily to any increase in oil prices to attempt to gain their lost market-share back. I still think it's going to be a while beyond 2020 before we see steady oil at $80 US. Almost 4700 wells ready-made to produce oil stateside is saying so."

 

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George Murphy

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyOil