Brent<\/a> crude futures for January, which expire on Friday, closed down 14 cents, or 0.22%, at $63.20 a barrel. WTI crude settled at $58.55 a barrel, down 10 cents, or 0.17%, from Wednesday’s close. There was no settlement on Thursday due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.<\/p>\nBoth contracts are headed for a fourth straight monthly loss, the longest losing streak since 2023, as expectations for higher global supply weighed on prices, despite being up more than 1% for the week.<\/p>\n
The strength of fuel-refining profit margins has supported crude demand in some places, but the bearish impact of an expected oil surplus is pressuring prices, said Rystad analyst Janiv Shah.<\/p>\n
A survey of 35 economists and analysts by Reuters showed that they expect Brent to average $62.23 per barrel in 2026, down from October’s forecast of $63.15. The benchmark has averaged $68.80 per barrel so far in 2025, according to LSEG data.<\/p>\n
Signs that a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia might be close pushed oil prices down sharply earlier this week, but they have recovered over the past three sessions as negotiations\u00a0dragged on.<\/p>\n
“Futures had been anticipating some sort of a peace agreement which has kept pressure on prices. Still, little is known at this time, and a no agreement will likely mean even tighter sanctions on Russia’s oil exports,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial in a note on Friday.<\/p>\n
On Sunday,\u00a0OPEC+ is likely\u00a0to leave oil output levels unchanged at its meetings and to agree on a mechanism to assess members’ maximum production capacity, two delegates from the group and a source familiar with the group’s talks told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is expected to\u00a0lower\u00a0its January crude price for Asian buyers for a second month to its lowest level for five years, under pressure from ample supplies and the surplus outlook, sources told Reuters on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brent crude oil futures were little changed on Friday as investors eyed the progress of the Russia-Ukraine peace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,122,45842,12,1872,124435,45063,123,963,644,6508,40477,124434],"class_list":["post-319678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-commodity-markets","tag-donald-trump","tag-energy","tag-ice-brent-crude-oct25","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-opec","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-trump-administration","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-wt-offshore-inc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}