- Oil prices retreated from seven-year highs as President Biden pledged to continue trying to lower oil prices and an API report that showed a modest increase in U.S. crude inventories (BBG)
- Despite the promise to lower oil prices, Biden admitted that increasing supplies is “going to be hard”
- EIA inventory data is due out later today, a day later than usual, due to the Monday holiday
- For the first time in a year, China disclosed its Iranian oil imports (Bloomberg)
- A total of 1.9 MMBbl arrived in December, according to customs data on Thursday
- The disclosure comes at a delicate time, with the eighth round of multilateral talks underway to revive the 2015 nuclear accord
- President Biden said on Wednesday, “its not tome to give up” on reviving the accord with Iran as progress has been made
- AEGIS notes that an unsanctioned Iran has the potential to add about 1.5 MMBbl/d to the global supply