How China And The U.S. Were Both Key To OPEC+’s Bearish Oil Supply Cuts

After long delays, last week saw OPEC+ announce oil production cuts way below what many oil traders had been expecting, causing the benchmark Brent oil price to drop over 2 percent immediately on the news, to just over US$80 per barrel (pb). Saudi Arabia announced merely a rollover of its previous voluntary 1 million barrels per day (bpd) cut, and Russia did the same for its 500,000 bpd cut (although only 300,000 bpd of this is crude oil, with the remainder being refined products). Both these rollovers will run from 1 January until 31 March, whereupon…