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This Week In Petroleum EIA Home > Petroleum > This Week In Petroleum |
Released on August 2, 2006 Sweating It Out Yesterday, on August 1, the Iranian President rejected a recent United Nations Security Council resolution and indicated that his country would continue to enrich uranium. Additionally, the formation of Tropical Storm Chris in the Atlantic Ocean was highlighted yesterday, with the projected path putting it north of Cuba by this weekend, with the possibility that it might enter the Gulf of Mexico sometime next week. In an environment in which very little spare production capacity is available, both upstream and downstream, each of these events in isolation would be enough to make market analysts nervous about the near-term future. But combined, along with ongoing supply uncertainties in Iraq, the Mideast, and continued production outages in Nigeria, worries about the increased risk of a supply disruption in August are keeping oil analysts on the edge of their chairs, watching daily events for signs that point to what the future might bring. Adding to this temperament is the knowledge that severe storms, even non-hurricane force storms, have often cut power to some refineries during August, causing them to be off-line unexpectedly, thus diminishing the potential to provide more supply as demand peaks. Of course, the month could just as easily run its course with no additional supply disruptions or damaging tropical storms or hurricanes. Nevertheless, with August having the potential for being anywhere from benign to extremely eventful for oil markets, add the cadre of oil market analysts to the list of people who are sweating it out as the month of August begins. Even if the factors that analysts are worrying about don’t materialize this month, concern about potential disruptions will cause suppliers to maintain more oil in inventory, thus keeping prices relatively high. U.S. Average Retail Gasoline Price Edges Up 0.1 Cent Retail diesel fuel prices gained 3.4 cents to reach 298.0 cents per gallon as of July 31, which is 63.2 cents higher than last year. Prices were up throughout all major regions of the country, with the Rocky Mountains seeing the largest increase of 6.5 cents to 305.2 cents per gallon. West Coast prices remained the highest in the nation, gaining 1.9 cents to reach 306.6 cents per gallon. California fell 0.4 cent to 309.3 cents per gallon. July Propane Build Near Record Text from the previous editions of “This Week In Petroleum” is now accessible through a link at the top right-hand corner of this page. |
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