WTI Flat Amid Stalled Peace Talks; Gas Falls Further Into Injection Season
- Crude rally pauses amid stalled peace talks
- WTI is down $0.22 to $92.74/bbl (7:30 AM CDT)
- Ship-tracking data showed Majestic X in between Sri Lanka and Indonesia, where the Tifani tanker was earlier seized headed to China
- This comes a day after Iran seized two vessels in the Strait of Hormuz
- The US military seized another tanker, Majestic X, associated with smuggling Iranian oil (Al-Arabiya)
- Despite the US continuing the Ceasefire, the conflict is escalating as both sides fight over control of international crude trade
- The EIA reported that US crude oil inventories rose 1.925 MMBbl/d yesterday, however gasoline and distillate stockpiles declined
- US crude inventories sit at 465.7 MMBbls, up 22.6 MMBbls year-over-year
- Gasoline and Distillate stocks are now both firmly below the 5-year average
- Russian oil resumes flowing to Slovakia via Druzhba (oilprice.com)
- The Druzhba pipeline's 1.3 MMBbl/d section to Slovakia has resumed flowing oil after a 3-month halt
- Natural gas falls as rescom and production trends continue
- Natural gas prompt is down -4.5c to $2.677/MMBtu (As of 07:30 AM CDT)
- Rescom continues to collapse as L48 weather warms, down a further 2 Bcf/d to 12.7 Bcf/d (Criterion)
- However, this time the loss was almost offset by a 1.5 Bcf/d increase in power demand
- For today and tomorrow, we’re forecasted to see around 1 HDD of weather driven demand (S&P)
- Production continues to hit new two-week lows, down another 1 Bcf/d today to 108.1 Bcf/d
- LNG feedgas has been slid lower to 19.6 Bcf/d
- The ongoing NGPL CS 302 outage is limit optionality at Sabine Pass through May 1(Criterion)
- The EIA will release its weekly natural gas storage report today, with the Bloomberg survey showing a median expectation of a 96 Bcf injection
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