Oil prices remain around $40 a barrel. Oil prices will remain at $40 a barrel or lower for a long period of time, why? Nearly 600,000 jobs were slashed in the United States last month, the most severe cut since December 1974. Let’s not forget that the last 4 months we have had 500,000 job losses in each month. That is a lot of lost jobs. If you don’t have a job, you don’t have any place to go. If you don’t have a job you can’t afford to buy fuel.
As we all know this is going to go away anytime soon. It’s not just the U.S. having this problem. Canada too suffered heavy job losses in January, the worst in over three decades, with 129,000 workers pushed into unemployment, according to data from Statistics Canada.
Europe’s largest economy, Germany, saw a massive 4.6 dive in industrial output in December, with steel orders down 47 percent in the fourth quarter, deepening concern over the state of Europe’s economy.
OPEC sources have indicated the group could cut a further 1 million bpd from output when it next meets on March 15. They can do that but the reality is we have more oil that we can use around the world right now anyway. Storage tanks are full. Ships are in the ocean with millions of barrels of fuel on them. A barrel is 42 gallons so when they save millions of barrels of oil of oil we are talking about a lot of oil.
Remember, OPEC can make these cuts but their economy depends on oil. If they don’t product oil, then there economy will suffer more than they are today.
Until the U.S. Economy puts the U.S. back on its feet along with the world. Count on low fuel costs.
Even with fuel costs low, there are still ways to save additional money on fuel. A solid fuel management program can reduce your fuel costs by 5-20 cents a gallon. The Sokolis a Fuel Management & Fuel Consulting company can make sure you are getting low cost fuel, fuel discounts, fuel rebates to ensure that you are saving on your companies bottom line. Sokolis Group can be reached at 267-482-6155 or https://sokolis.com/.