“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:

• London goes Tier-3 on Wed

• 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 -