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We are a mere 7 days into a new year, and have already seen the first oil rally in the markets. Many factors have played a role in the first rally of the new year. Oil has been tumultuous over the last 11 months but has seen some stability and positivity since Biden’s election win in November. Biden was confirmed by the senate to be the 46^th President of the United States of America and he will have a democratic controlled House and Senate to put his plans into action.

Many investors are awaiting the OPEC+ decision on whether they plan to increase oil production even as the Covid-19 virus brings fear of another spike in cases.

As expected, it appears the OPEC+ group (includes Russia) will delay its forecasted January oil production hike by 3 months, according to sources who’ve spoken with Algeria’s energy minister Abdelmadjid Attar. This is contingent upon agreement at tomorrow’s meeting. No official announcement has been made. Currently January WTI futures are trading lower by $0.81 to $44.72/barrel as a classic “buy the rumor, sell the fact” scenario may be playing out.

During last week’s OPEC + meeting the group agreed to keep production cuts of 9.7 million barrels per day until the end of July.  This effort has helped bolster oil prices to levels of almost double the values in April. The prior OPEC + meeting brought forth the creation of a new advisory group, the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee.  According to Reuters, “To step up consultations on the effectiveness of the agreement, OPEC+ also agreed that a panel called the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee or JMMC, will meet monthly until the end of 2020. Its first such meeting is on Thursday next week… “It’s an advisory committee that can make recommendations,” one of the OPEC+ sources said of the JMMC’s role, declining to be identified by name.” The member nations that compose the JMMC are Algeria, Kuwait, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, plus non-OPEC countries Russia and Kazakhstan.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock since February 2020, you’ve probably noticed the economic impact worldwide of the novel corona-virus, Covid-19. There has been little to no positive news even as Governors ease restrictions and states/counties move from red to yellow to green phases, until the May 2020 unemployment rates were released days ago. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, May saw an increase of 2.5 million jobs and an unemployment rate of 13.3%, down from April’s 14.7%. This number came as a overwhelmingly positive shock as most experts had predicted it to increase to near 20%, the worst figure since the Great Depression.[1]