In Today’s Post:

1. Holdings Watch
2. Commodity Watch
3. Oil Inventory Preview
4. Stuff We Care About Today
5. Odds & Ends

Holdings Watch

• $10KP: $30,300 / 38% cash
• No trades yesterday

Commodity Watch

Crude oil rallied $1.92 to close at $70.01 yesterday on a weak dollar and little else. Crude is trading at it’s highest level since early November.  This morning crude is trading above $71 after API released fairly bullish looking inventory numbers yesterday afternoon.

• Saudi Watch:  Khurais Online. Saudi Arabia’s 1.2 mm bopd Khurais field came on line yesterday. Completion of this field is the key to Saudi’s goal of bumping their productive capacity to 12 mm bopd. It is unclear how quickly the Kingdom will ramp Khurais up and what this will mean with regard to their currently production quota. They have been making comments lately that oil has "risen enough" for now.
• MEND Watch: Rebels claim to have attacked a (CVX) pumping station. The military claims a fire at the pumping station was the result of an accident. Chevron has not yet verified or denied Mend’s claims

Natural gas closed unchanged at $3.73 yesterday, lifted to even by an end of day climb in crude.  This morning gas is trading up a dime with crude.

• Early Read On Natural Gas Inventories: The Street is looking for an injection of 110 Bcf tomorrow.
• Tropics Watch: Zip, nada, nothing.

Oil Inventory Preview

• API Watch: After the close yesterday API reported:
  • Crude: Down 5.959 million barrels
    
    • Utilization up 1% to 84% (EIA was at 86.3% utilization last week which looked high given the tepid demand for crude last week and the low product production levels)
    • Imports: Down 0.51 million bopd to 8.518 million bopd.  (this is pretty low)
  • Gasoline: up 27,000 barrels
  • Distillate: up 19,000 barrels

ZComment: Normally during this time of the year we expect to see smallish draws on crude and smallish builds in gasoline and distillate inventories. This makes sense as demand isn’t really at its peak yet as far as summer driving goes while refineries are gearing up for higher demand in the hotter months.