Unleaded has been having an unprecedented move to the downside this month as everything shuts down and demand for fuel to travel falls off of a cliff.
Unleaded gas price. Wow. Dropped from $1.90+ just over 2 months ago down to nearly 68c on the low for Monday.......much of that drop is the anticipation of the Coronavirus shutdown.
Wow-Wow-Wow!
2 years below
The gasoline chart below shows how demand usually increases from early in the year thru the Summer driving season.
One can guess that demand in the next few weeks will drop off of a cliff and well, well below the bottom of the chart below. How low?
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/weekly/gasoline.php
| 0.015 | 0.014 | 0.014 |
Current gas prices at the pump............they will go MUCH lower the rest of the month as the price catches up to the price in the futures and the regional distributors, gradually pass along their MUCH, MUCH lower cost. ........after weeks of enjoying a massive windfall with a (near) record difference between their cost and the much higher price they are charging us.
https://www.gasbuddy.com/GasPriceMap?lat=38.822395&lng=-96.591588&z=4
Crude has had an incredible drop too, thanks to the Coronavirus and over production by Opec and Russia but nothing like the chart above for Unleaded:
Weekly US ending stocks of crude oil.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCRSTUS1&f=W
Weekly ending stocks for unleaded gasoline.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WGTSTUS1&f=W
metmike: Interesting in that Unleaded stocks were at record high levels earlier this year, then the last 4 weeks featured some hefty drawdowns, including a big drop last week..........before all these shutdowns. So instead of the seasonal uptick in demand continuing to draw down stocks, record low demand will cause them to set new highs by a wide margin. They will go higher and higher the next couple of months. This is why we dropped to 68c for RBJ20 on Monday. WOW! That's $1.25 lower than just 3 months ago.
Weekly US ending stocks for distillate fuel oil(heating oil-especially used in the Northeast).
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WDISTUS1&f=W
https://www.investing.com/economic-calendar/eia-crude-oil-inventories-75
Crude had a big increase in inventory last week. The EIA report comes out on Wednesdays at 9:30am.
Latest Release Mar 11, 2020 Actual7.664M Forecast2.266M Previous 0.785M
| Release Date | Time | Actual | Forecast | Previous | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 18, 2020 | 10:30 | 2.933M | 7.664M | ||
| Mar 11, 2020 | 10:30 | 7.664M | 2.266M | 0.785M | |
| Mar 04, 2020 | 11:30 | 0.785M | 2.644M | 0.452M | |
| Feb 26, 2020 | 11:30 | 0.452M | 2.005M | 0.414M | |
| Feb 20, 2020 | 12:00 | 0.414M | 2.494M | 7.459M | |
| Feb 12, 2020 | 11:30 | 7.459M | 2.987M | 3.355M |
Crude spiked below $20, Unl hit 60c.
That was as April crude went off the board/expired at 1:30pm.
The new lead month is May, which is trading at $23....which is still life of contract lows for that contract.