Crude report from WSJ - Wed could be rocky.
Erwin
Crude-oil futures finished modestly lower Tuesday, as selling
carried over from Monday's session on the New York Mercantile
Exchange, while petroleum product futures settled mixed, with
gasoline futures getting a slight boost on word of refinery outages.
The market will likely suffer Wednesday following bearish
inventory data released late Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute.
Gasoline was supported by catalytic cracker outages at Shell Oil
Co. and Phillips 66 Co. refineries. An explosion Monday at Vitol's
Come-By-Chance refinery in Newfoundland added to supportive
sentiment, but the unit has been off-line since an explosion last
month. Shell shut its 48,000-barrel-a-day fluid catalytic cracking
unit at its Wood River, Ill., refinery for one week. Phillips
65,000-barrel-a-day catalytic cracker went down Sunday in Sweeny,
Texas. The outage, which was caused by a leak, comes five days
ahead of planned maintenance at the unit.
The refinery outages, while supportive, weren't enough to generate
supply concerns in a market awash in petroleum products, an
analyst said. "Nothing has really changed. The fundamentals are
still bearish; there is still a lot of gasoline, heating oil and
crude oil supply in the market," said Scott Ryll, an energy
analyst with GSC Energy in Atlanta.
The American Petroleum Institute reported the nation's crude oil
stocks jumped by a much greater-than-expected 6.496 million
barrels in the week ended April 10. Gasoline stocks fell by 1.412
million barrels, and distillate stocks, which include heating oil,
rose by 1.195 million barrels. Refineries operated at 96.2%
capacity, up from 94.3% the previous week. (WSJ Interactive) |
