Petroleum futures backed off morning gains, but remained in the black in early Thursday afternoon trading.

With NYMEX February gasoline and distillate contracts set to expire on Friday, volumes were low across all contracts and trading has been slow this week.

The NYMEX February RBOB contract, which was up as much as 3cts in the morning session, was barely above unchanged, trading 0.37ct higher at $2.0394/gal. The more active March RBOB contract was about 0.5ct higher at $2.0663/gal. The high and low trades for the February RBOB contract have been separated by only about 5cts so far this week. And the difference between the high and low trades for March RBOB has been under 5cts.

Spot refined product prices were mostly higher in early afternoon trading, though a wider discount on the Gulf Coast left prices nominally lower. The largest price moves have come on the West Coast, where Los Angeles CARBOB was pricing at about a 33ct premium in early afternoon trading as the high RVP gasoline season is coming to a close.

Distillate contracts were retaining more of their morning gains after having spent much of the week under pressure. The NYMEX March ULSD contract was up just under 1ct to $2.3995/gal and the February contract was 1.55cts higher at $2.4695/gal. Estimated volumes for the February ULSD contract were at just over 5,500 contracts at midday.

Crude oil futures were also higher, but not by much. The NYMEX March West Texas Intermediate contract was 13cts higher at $72.75/bbl as open interest and volumes were lower. NYMEX data showed WTI volumes this week have struggled to reach much over 800,000 contracts after being heavily traded in the first couple weeks of January.

Brent has pulled back from highs as well with the March and April contracts both up by about 27cts to $76.85/bbl and $75.88/bbl, respectively, maintaining about $1 of backwardation.


This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.


--Denton Cinquegrana, dcinquegrana@opisnet.com; Editing by Jeff Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

01-30-25 1318ET