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