Heating Oil News – Heating Oil Price Analysis
The oil prices on the international commodity futures markets moved sideways yesterday with relatively large fluctuations, but are tending to weaken again this morning, so that the medium-term downward trend can continue, at least for the time being. As a result, the heating oil prices in Europ will start the last trading day of the week with a nice discount. A lot of Oil traders use trading robots like Oil Profit to help them make profits in the current oil market.
The November contracts for European North Sea oil “Brent” are currently at 88.40 US dollars per barrel, a barrel of US oil “West Texas Intermediate” costs 81.40 dollars per hour. The euro is able to recover strongly against the US dollar and is trading at around 98.20 dollar cents this morning.
The US economy is headed for recession. In the first quarter there was a minus of 1.6 percent, in the second of 0.6 percent. Bad economic indicators are also coming from China this morning. Here, growth in the second quarter fell to a measly 0.4 percent by Chinese standards. The target of plus 5.5 percent set for this year will be missed by a wide margin, which is certainly largely due to the corona restrictions that still exist. The HSBC purchasing managers’ index from the manufacturing sector fell to 48.1 percent as of September, which suggests that economic output will shrink. In Europe, the economic situation is even grimmer due to extremely high energy costs. EU business and consumer sentiment fell further from 97.3 to 93.7 in September.
This is currently depressing the mood of stockbrokers again, who traded the share prices down yesterday.
In this context, crude oil prices were able to hold up surprisingly well, which is partly due to the strike by French refinery workers. Around 60 percent of the capacities here are currently paralyzed, which is further exacerbating the already tight supply situation in Europe. The expected production cuts by OPEC+, new sanctions against Iran and a new sanctions package against Russia that is likely to come soon are also having a supportive effect.
On the currency market, the euro continued to gain ground against the US dollar yesterday. A German consumer price index that rose to 10 percent yesterday gave a foretaste of the inflation data from the EU that are due to be published today. Another soon and strong rate hike by the ECB seems to be inevitable. Good labor market data from the US did not help the US dollar yesterday.
So the best conditions for the German domestic market, where the heating oil prices will start the day with a nice discount. Current calculations and initial price trends suggest a drop of around two to three cents per liter in the morning. The freight rates for inland shipping are also falling again, so that there is at least a slight relaxation in transport costs. The extremely high demand remains the main problem for retailers in this country, because capacities are completely overloaded and delivery times of several weeks are the order of the day.