보기: Market Movers Americas, April 11-15: War in Ukraine keeps pressure on US commodity logistics

In this week's Market Movers: Europe's efforts to replace Russian oil make tanker freight surge, slow rail cycle times impair coal movements, warm weather in the Northeast US is set to widen spot gas basis spreads, and MYSO will publicly discuss its latest capacity auction results.

Starting in shipping, Europe's efforts to replace 2.7 million barrels per day of self-sanctioned Russian crude and nearly 900,000 barrels per day of clean oil products will continue to drive US Gulf Coast-loading tanker freight rates this week. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, freight rates on the USGC-Europe routes have risen 74.1% for crude tankers and 260% to transport 38,000 metric tons of mainly diesel and naphtha cargoes. High export volumes have rapidly depleted the number of tankers available to load on the US Gulf Coast, and charterers will increasingly eye upsizing stems wherever possible. The Very Large Crude Carriers and Long Range 1 tankers will see heightened interest for voyages to Europe.

In coal, slow rail cycle times are preventing US spot thermal and metallurgical coal from getting to seaborne markets despite surging global demand amid the war in Ukraine. Ports have coal export capacity, but there's no rail service available to bring the additional coal to market. Without enough trains to take coal away, production has stopped at some mines as stockpiles reach permitted maximums. This brings us to our social media question of the week: With transportation issues ongoing, are end-users in danger of energy shortages or will suppliers provide it at any cost? Tweet us your thoughts.

Moving to natural gas, a minor heat wave forecast in the US Northeast for April 12-14 is expected to slash heating demand in the area for natural gas. This could dramatically widen regional spot gas prices' discounts to cash Henry Hub in the near term. S&P Global projects that Northeast residential-commercial demand will average 5.3 billion cubic feet per day for that period, down 45% from the April 1-7 average of 9.6 billion cubic feet per day. CustomWeather forecast that average temperatures in the Northeast will rise into the low 60s Fahrenheit for April 12-14, which would be about 10 degrees above normal for mid-April.

And finally in power, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator will discuss its latest capacity auction results during a public meeting on April 15. MYSO will outline the price and amount of capacity that market participants obtained to meet resource adequacy requirements for the period starting June 1. The planning resource auction ran from March 28 to March 31.

The Platts Atlas of Energy Transition is your map to the sustainable commodity markets of the future. You can explore the Atlas by visiting the address displayed on your screen. Thanks for kicking off your Monday with us and have a great week ahead.