Feeling The Love! The Energy Report 02/14/2025

Commodity prices are feeling the love this St Valentines day morning on hopes that tariffs delayed could be tariffs denied. Oh sure,  that doesn’t mean that your St Valentines Day will be cheap with record breaking chocolate prices and beef prices, love is a bit expensive this year but maybe you could offset that in the wonderfully volatile commodity trade.
Oil prices are fixated on President Trump as he is rewriting the history books on a daily basis with bold leadership on the economy and war and peace.
Get ready for maximum pressure on Iran.
Oil prices popped this morning after U.S. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said that we can: “ We can apply maximum economic pressure on Iran and that “ We’re committed to cut Iran oil exports to 100k barrels/day.

Yesterday oil prices which sold off early on the potential end to the Russian Ukraine conflict and on news that President Trump was going to announce reciprocal tariffs on the EU and South Korea and Japan.

Yet after it was reported that they would not go into effect in many cases until April oil came rallying back. There’s going to be a lot of time to negotiate before the tariffs are put in place.
This came as President Trump got a win some tariffs as Europe was shammed into reducing their tariffs on some US goods to 2%.
Bloomberg on trade wrote that “The president on Thursday signed a measure directing the US Trade Representative and Commerce secretary to propose new levies on a country-by-country basis in an effort to rebalance trade relations — a sweeping process that could take weeks or months to complete. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, told reporters all studies should be complete by April 1 and that Trump could act immediately afterward.

Still , The European Commission showed indignation and said that it “views President Trump’s proposed “reciprocal” trade policy as a step in the wrong direction.
The EU said that the remains committed to an open and predictable global trading system that benefits all partners.
They said that “The EU maintains some of the lowest tariffs in the world and sees no justification for increased US tariffs on its exports. Tariffs are taxes. By imposing tariffs, the US is taxing its own citizens, raising costs for business, stifling growth and fueling inflation. Tariffs heighten economic uncertainty and disrupt the efficiency and integration of global markets. . . .

And at the same time the Trump administration is starting to focus on the fact that they spend an awful lot of money as to our US taxpayers to protect Europe in NATO.

Reuters report that  “The credit ratings of Europe’s NATO members are likely to suffer if they ramp up defense spending in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands although they might drive the region to jointly issue debt, ratings firm S&P Global has said.  Despite almost doubling their defense expenditure since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, European nations on average still spend below NATO’s 2% of GDP guidelines, while the U.S. finances nearly two-thirds of NATO’s military budget.”

Oil traders had a risk premium in oil just in case the conflict between Russia and Ukraine ended up being World War III.  Oil traders could see that the Biden Administration and players in the EU had no plan to end the war and, in some ways, seemed to encourage it.
President Trump who says that the war would have never started if he were President and based on his track record in the White House, that is probably true has a plan, and it is moving forward
. Oil had sold off on news of the
Reuters is reporting today that President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Ukraine would be involved in peace talks with Russia, although Kyiv said it would be premature to speak with Moscow at a security conference on Friday.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said Ukraine would have a seat at the table during any peace negotiations with Russia over ending the war. “They’re part of it. We would have Ukraine, and we have Russia, and we’ll have other people involved, a lot of people,” Trump said.
Yet the odds of this war continuing and potentially dragging in the rest of Europe has been reduced and that is not lost on the oil trade.

Behind all these actions at the end of the day we have to continue to remember that with oil supplies there’s still tightening according to the International Energy industry oil supplies in the OECD countries continue to fall they fell by a whopping 26.1 million barrels to two 737.2 million barrels that is 91.1 million barrels below their five year average preliminary data also shows that inventories could fall even further to 49.3 million barrels in January yes supplies in China fell dramatically.

Natural gas surged to the upper Bollinger band and pulled back after more winter weather reports are shaking up the market in fact, we might not see spring until March or even April which is causing a dramatic shift in the natural gas world and an end to the supply glut.
The EIA reported a bullish decrease of 100 Bcf from the previous week. Stocks were 248 Bcf less than last year at this time and 67 Bcf below the five-year average of 2,364 Bcf. At 2,297 Bcf, total working gas is within the five-year historical range. This is after the EIA had to raise its price forecast for 2025 and 2026, because or winter. Tuesday the E IA said the natural gas price at the U.S. benchmark Henry Hub is expected to average $3.80 per million British thermal units in 2025 — up about 21 percent from its last forecast. EIA also raised its estimate for 2026, putting the annual average price at $4.20 per million Btus, compared with $4 in its January report.  The Henry Hub spot price averaged $4.13 in January, EIA said, up from $3.01 in December.
Fox Weather channel models also suggest colder to come.  Also reports that European gas storage fell below the five year average standing at 47% full or 49 billion cubic meters. Keep in mind that you experience president James is currently speaking in the United

Download the Fox Weather app to keep up with the latest on this winter weather that is driving natural gas prices.
Stay tuned to the Fox Business Network, the only network in America that is invested in you. Call to open your trading account today by calling me at 888-264-5665 email me at pflynn@pricegroup.com

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