US spot prices mostly fall as pipeline outage roils markets.

摘要

Spot product prices largely declined in the week to Sept. 16, as inventories mounted and the futures benchmarks weakened. An outage on the Colonial Pipeline made matters worse on the Gulf Coast, but helped drive up prices in the New York Harbor (NYH). Gasoline markets largely shrugged off the US EIA's weekly inventory report on Wednesday, which showed stocks inched up 0.6MM bbl to 228.4MM bbl in the week to Sept. 9, a partial rebound from the previous week's sharp decline. On the Gulf Coast, gasoline differentials tumbled as a leak and outage on the Colonial Pipeline's Line 1, which pumps gasoline from the Gulf Coast to the US Northeast, forced barrels to get stuck in the region, creating more of a glut. Differentials recovered some of their losses at mid-week after Colonial said that the line likely would be restarted by the end of the period, but differentials dropped again on Thursday when the company pushed back its restart target to the following week. Prices ended the week at their lowest in nearly three months. In the New York Harbor (NYH), gasoline prices climbed as the Colonial outage threatened to tighten regional supplies. RBOB prices, however, were flat-to-lower.