As the United States and Europe falter under the weight of ever-increasing coronavirus cases and a general lull in markets, the health of the Asian crude market has arguably pulled crude prices and differentials away from the adverse ramifications of second wave coronavirus. China, India, Japan, South Korea; all of them are increasing their crude intake, increasing refinery runs and riding the waves of healthy refining cracks. At the same time, the early December OPEC+ meeting has tainted the upbeat sentiment a bit – the parties’ agreeing to meet every month to realign on the correctness of the production quotas and their splits infers a certain inherent fragility of the deal looking into 2021. The previous 6-month covenant had the benefit of providing strong binding guidelines for the market, whilst monthly quarreling on the necessity of putting out even more crude into recovering economies might create (unnecessary) market reverberations. […]