The Demand Question
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“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” - Leon Trotsky
Holiday Schedule: We’re back for a 2nd time this week, on Thursday. After that, we’ll be off until Jan 5th.
OIL DEMAND.
We start off, where we left off - OPEC+ & Oil Demand:
Vaccine roll-out timing (?)
Increasing lock-downs
OPEC+ & restraint (production cuts)
We’ll start off w/ the Good:
US products consumption remains (relatively) strong
China’s crude oil throughput sets records in November
The Not-So-Good is about the EU / UK:
Starting tonight, France has an 8pm curfew
The Dutch go full-lockdown, for 5 weeks
The ironic concern is for Oil is that the Dutch may “succeed” in getting cases down to near-zero.
Obviously, at a *steep* economic cost.
With the indirect consequence that other countries may try the same -
OPEC.
Contradictions abound in Oil Markets:
In the last few weeks, commodities have rallied on vaccine headlines
At the same time, OPEC cut its demand forecast for 2021
From OPEC’s latest MOMR:
OPEC has steadily pulled back its 2021 demand forecast in recent months.
We highlighted “Europe” in the above chart, bc we think *that* is where the uncertainty (downside oil consumption uncertainty) lies.
OPEC also postponed its technical meetings - which were scheduled to begin tomorrow - to early January.
In light of the changing Covid-policy roll-outs that we discussed above (especially in Europe), the postponements makes sense -
OTHER NEWS.
Saudi tankers under fire
Jet fuel mounts a comeback
All things considered, 2020 has been positive for US LNG
That’s it for today - we’ll be back on Thursday - catch y’all then -