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To: Broken_Clock who wrote (10315)	2/24/2012 9:12:47 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 85487

European benchmark is Brent. Brent is currently $125.28, (1:09 PM) not the price yer TV is telling you. Gas shipments rev up as US refineries close ECONOMIC DRIVER BLOOMBERG NEWS Gasoline shipments to the U.S. from Europe are poised to reach a five-week high, a Bloomberg News survey showed, as Atlantic Coast refineries reduce output of the auto fuel. Traders and oil companies booked 18 ships for the two weeks to March 8, and 10 more are likely to be hired, according to the median estimate in a survey this week of seven shipbrokers, traders and owners who specialize in shipping the auto fuel. That’s the most since the two weeks from Jan. 19, when 16 vessels were chartered and 15 were likely to be booked. Tankers carrying gasoline on the Rotterdam-to-New York trade route are earning $17,623 a day, the most since Jan. 4, according to the London-based Baltic Exchange. Higher prices for unleaded gasoline in New York Harbor, compared with Rotterdam prices, support U.S. import demand from Europe, said RS Platou Markets AS. “This is a part of a structural issue, as U.S. East Coast refineries are struggling with weak refinery margins and several are consequently closing down, lowering local gasoline supply,” Herman Hildan, an analyst at the Oslo-based investment bank, said by email. The price of gas at the pump climbed 7.5 percent this year through Feb. 21, according to data from the American Automobile Association. Crude oil rose 7.3 percent for the year through Wednesday in New York futures trading, and gasoline advanced 15 percent. Consumers will have to spend another $25 billion to fuel their cars and trucks this year if higher prices stick, Steven Wieting, Citigroup Inc.’s managing director of economic and market, wrote in a report this week. When the year started, he was looking for a decline of $15 billion. “This combination suggests only very modest changes to the U.S. growth and inflation outlook” from the energy-price swings, Wieting wrote. He maintains that the U.S. economy is “gradually building immunity” from the kind of surge in gasoline prices seen this year, and that increased capital spending on energy-related products will lessen the economic impact of the higher prices. Industry outlays rose $34 billion last year and may climb even more this year, the report said. The ships, known as medium-range tankers, would be able to haul about 8.8 million barrels of the fuel, or 629,000 barrels a day, over the next two weeks. That’s 80 percent of the 782,000 barrels the U.S. imported daily over the past year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The supply of tankers available to haul trans-Atlantic gasoline cargoes dropped to the lowest level since Jan. 26, according to the survey, with 28 vessels likely to be available for the voyage, a decline of four from last week. The survey is based on so-called single-voyage, or spot, charters and excludes loadings under longer-term contracts. It assumes shipments to the U.S. East Coast from northwest Europe. Each tanker would normally haul about 37,000 tons of gasoline, or 315,000 barrels. telegram.com