Energy prices in U.S. mainly pulled back last week, with diesel, Brent and WTI prices fluctuating by -2.7%, -1.9% and +0.1% respectively.
In the past week, U.S. oil production decreased the most it did in the past year, with production dropping by approximately 110,000 barrels per day. Despite this decrease, oil production output figures for our neighbours to the south are still major, with more than 9 million barrels extracted every day.
The next OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) meeting will be held in less than 2 weeks (June 5) in Vienna, Austria. This meeting is very important because an increase or decrease in OPEC production quotas could set the direction for crude oil prices in the coming months. As we all remember, the organization decided not to decrease its quotas at its last meeting in November, and this had caused crude oil prices to collapse by almost 50% in two months.
The number of oil rigs in operation in the United States has started to stabilize in the past month. The last figure released by Baker Hugues was 885, almost 1,000 less than the highs reached in 2014.
The loonie stumbled by close to 2% in one week against the greenback. Given that gasoline is paid for in Canadian dollars across the country, we will have to monitor this trend closely in the coming weeks to see if it continues, in order to assess the impact of this movement on your supply prices.
