Cocktail Of Bullish Headlines Push Markets Higher

Optimism abounds this week as a cocktail of bullish headlines push energy and equity markets higher for a third day. Markets around the world cheer improving COVID stats, the official approval of a vaccine, the reopening of the world’s 3rd largest port, and energy markets are getting an added boost from inventory declines and another hurricane threat.

While this 3 day rally, that’s added 20 cents or more from Friday’s lows, has taken the chance of a technical collapse off the table near term, there’s still work to be done to eliminate the longer threat of a lower trend. Peg the starting levels of the 7 day selloff as the targets we’ll need to see broken if the bulls want to take back control longer term. RBOB futures will transition to the winter grade spec next week, which will knock 13 cents off of prompt values. If you’re wondering why gasoline basis values in your local market suddenly jumped in the past couple of days, odds are physical trades in your region are now referencing the October RBOB contract.  

It looks like there’s a good chance we could see a hurricane heading towards the US Gulf Coast next week. The storm system in the Caribbean that was given just 20% odds of development a few days ago, now has 80% odds of developing and early models have it pointed anywhere from Northern Mexico to Corpus Christi, Houston, or perhaps even Louisiana as we mark the 4 year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey. The name of this storm, assuming it develops, will likely be Ida, but could be Julian if one of the other 2 storms churning over the Atlantic is named first. Neither of those appears to be a threat to the US at this point.

It’s another week of small changes from the API report, which was said to show inventory drawdowns across the board last week.  Crude oil inventory dropped by 1.6 million barrels, gasoline was down almost 1 million barrels, and distillates dropped by 245,000 barrels. The DOE’s weekly report is due out at its normal time today.  

Add another renewable diesel project to the pile: Exxon’s subsidiary Imperial oil announced a new plan to co-produce renewable diesel at its refinery in Edmonton, expanding the company’s strategy of co-producing rather than converting its existing facilities as we’ve seen other refiners do. Canada’s Clean Fuel Standard takes effect next year, giving more financial incentive for this type of investment, and adding to the competition for feedstocks and renewable products that’s pulling traditional biodiesel away from the US markets that don’t have a credit program to offset the higher costs of those fuels.

Speaking of which, after RINs got hammered last week when reports suggested the EPA was going to lower its RFS target for 2021, and raise it for 2022, we’re seeing values gap higher this morning, with trades already 18 cents above Monday’s lows. With this type of move, odds are we’ll see another update on the EPA’s plans (or lack of) later this morning.

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