Petroleum futures were down at midday Monday after closing out last week with two straight sessions of gains.
Morning trading was mostly featureless ahead of Tuesday's expiration of the NYMEX June West Texas Intermediate contracts and as more refined product futures trading volume shifts to the July contracts.
The June WTI contract rose as high as $80.60/bbl and July WTI moved just above $80/bbl in early trading, but couldn't hold onto those gains. The June WTI contract was off by 29cts to $79.77/bbl at midday, while the July contract was down by 33cts to $79.25/bbl.
The July Brent contract made a morning run toward $85/bbl before coming under some selling pressure and was down 39cts to $83.59/bbl at midday, nearly $1 below its morning high.
Refined product futures were mixed with NYMEX ULSD contracts modestly higher and RBOB down by several cents. ULSD futures this month have come under selling pressure after moving above $2.50/bbl. That happened again on Monday as the June ULSD contract hit a morning high of $2.5043/gal, before falling back to $2.489/gal at midday.
The July ULSD contract was up by about 0.5ct to $2.5049/gal, about 1.5cts above June. There is about some 5 cents in carry between the June and November ULSD contracts.
Gasoline futures closed out last week with a strong rally, but was coming under some aggressive selling Monday, leaving the NYMEX June RBOB contract nearly 3 cents lower at $2.5449/gal, about 1ct above the morning low. The July RBOB contract was off by 2.66cts to $2.532/gal, narrowing some of the backwardation.
Cash gasoline markets largely tracked futures in the morning session, with prices off between 1.2cts and 4.4cts/gal.
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.
--Reporting by Denton Cinquegrana, dcinquegrana@opisnet.com; Editing by Jeff Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
05-20-24 1247ET
