Little To Support Crude Overnight

WTI & Brent sit ~$0.70-0.80 softer than settlement levels at typing, with little to support the space in a news light Asia-Pac session. This comes after the benchmarks shed ~$0.30 come Thursday's settlement, with a more risk averse feel evident on well documented, and familiar sources of risk, with regional equities adding to the pressure during the final Asia-Pac session of the week.

• •The latest round of weekly DoE inventory data saw a surprise build in headline crude stocks (which was at odds with the drawdown seen in the API estimate), while refinery utilisation saw a surprise downtick. Elsewhere, products saw larger than expected/surprise draws, in line with the picture provided by the API estimates, while Cushing stocks saw a small drawdown. U.S. crude production was essentially unchanged in the most recent week.
• •Thursday also saw the release of an Energy Intelligence source piece, which noted that "Iran's oil exports could rise by as much as 500,000 barrels per day by February, according to a senior Iranian official, if US President-elect Joe Biden takes a less rigorous approach to enforcing "brutal" sanctions imposed under incumbent Donald Trump."
• •Finally, the IEA's latest monthly oil market report saw the Agency slash its '20 global crude demand forecast, noting that it does not expect COVID vaccines to provide a significant boost for crude demand until well into '21.