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By the Oil Desk at Freight Investor Services Ltd.

Brent closed up 0.93 last night to $56.09 and WTI closed at $53.90 up 0.88. There does seem to be a theme emanating in the oil market right now. As I mentioned yesterday, we heard that Russia will increase exports next year, Libya are back to 250 kbpd production and the US rig count increased by 13 last week. In fact, if the rig count increases by 13 this week, then we will back to the exact same number of rigs than we were this time last year. However, with the US back in from holidays yesterday, the market rallied regardless of this somewhat bearish news. Is this a sign that the market is being propped up by the US producers hedging as much as they can? Look what happened January of this year - Brent traded down to $27.50 per bbl. Granted, it was in the high 30's this time last year, so the fall to 27 was only a mere 30% fall, but things just seem a little fragile to me. A bit like my diet plan come next week. Yes, we know that OPEC and non-OPEC have this Magna Carta of an agreement regarding production, but we're not in Runnymede and we're not in the Middle Ages. People will scrutinise the enforcement of the agreement come middle of Jan and unless there is evidence that all parties are adhering to the agreement, I fear we could be in the same situation we were last year.

Economic data/events

* 3pm: U.S. Nov. pending home sales m/m, est. 0.5% (prior 0.1%)

* Today:

* Bloomberg-compiled refinery snapshot, looking at key outages at U.S. and Canadian refineries, with offline capacity projections for CDUs, FCCs

* API issues weekly U.S. oil inventory report; data is one day later than usual because of public holidays

* Genscape weekly ARA crude stockpiles report

* Oseberg loading program (February); usually, the first of major North Sea crude schedules to be released

Singapore 380 cSt

Jan17 - 325.50 / 327.50

Feb17 - 323.00 / 325.00

Mar17 - 321.00 / 323.00

Apr17 - 319.75 / 321.75

May17 - 318.50 / 320.50

Jun17 - 317.75 / 319.75

Q1-17 - 323.25 / 325.25

Q2-17 - 318.25 / 320.25

Q3-17 - 315.00 / 317.50

Q4-17 - 310.75 / 313.25

CAL17 - 317.00 / 320.50

CAL18 - 306.00 / 311.00

Singapore 180 cSt

Jan17 - 331.00 / 333.00

Feb17 - 329.00 / 331.00

Mar17 - 327.75 / 329.75

Apr17 - 326.75 / 328.75

May17 - 325.50 / 327.50

Jun17 - 324.75 / 326.75

Q1-17 - 329.25 / 331.25

Q2-17 - 325.50 / 327.50

Q3-17 - 321.75 / 324.25

Q4-17 - 317.75 / 320.25

CAL17 - 324.00 / 327.50

CAL18 - 313.75 / 318.75

Rotterdam 3.5%

Jan17 302.25 / 304.25

Feb17 302.50 / 304.50

Mar17 302.25 / 304.25

Apr17 301.75 / 303.75

May17 301.00 / 303.00

Jun17 300.25 / 302.25

Q1-17 302.50 / 304.50

Q2-17 301.25 / 303.25

Q3-17 297.75 / 300.25

Q4-17 293.50 / 296.00

CAL17 300.00 / 303.50

CAL18 292.50 / 297.50

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