Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

In the energy sector, Russia’s revenues from exports of crude oil and refined products has fallen to its lowest level since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The International Energy Agency has reported this morning that Moscow’s sales of fossil fuels fell again in November due to lower export volumes and weaker prices.

These brighter prospects extend to our 2026 forecast, which we have upgraded by 90 kb/d, to 860 kb/d y-o-y.

“We need to ask who is setting the agenda for the UK’s future with AI.”

“In the absence of independent regulation or scrutiny, we’re at the mercy of technology companies’ commercial interests aligning with what the public want.”

Trade data shows China’s exports topped forecasts in November, driven by a surge in shipments to non-US markets

Back in China, car sales have fallen for the second month running.

Retail vehicle sales fell about 8% to 2.1 million units in November, according to data published by the China Passenger Car Association today. This shows a 22% slump in sales of gasoline cars, with new-energy vehicle sales rising 4.2% for the month.

“Usually the trend at the end of the year is that the car market should get stronger and stronger from October. But the retail sales in November compared to previous years is unusual.”

“Mortgage rates continue on the downward trend and November was particularly fruitful for fixed rate cuts.

The re-pricing by lenders led to the average five-year fixed rate dropping below 5% for the first time in over two years and sits at its lowest point since before the ‘mini-Budget’ in September 2022, alongside its two-year counterpart.

Cloudflare reports it is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs

Technical problems at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today have taken a host of websites offline this morning.

Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it “is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs [application programming interfaces – used when apps exchange data with each other].