OPEC+ agreed to ease oil-output cuts next year after almost a week of fraught negotiations that exposed a new rift at the heart of the cartel. The group will add 500,000 barrels a day of production to the market in January, and ministers will then hold monthly consultations to decide on the next steps. That’s a much shorter time frame than OPEC+ usually operates under, and before this week the expectation had been that the group would hold off putting more oil onto the fragile market for another three months. But the compromise deal avoided a breakdown of OPEC+ unity, which had become a growing risk after days of ... (full story)