NEW DELHI: Brent crude oil futures rose on Friday as drawn-out Russia-Ukraine peace talks kept geopolitical risks elevated, while traders kept one eye on the outcome of an OPEC+ meeting on Sunday for clues about potential output changes. However, US West Texas Intermediate crude futures were frozen after a system outage at exchange operator CME Group.
Traders said they were informed by CME just before 0300 GMT of the halt due to a cooling issue at its CyrusOne data centres, which affected trading of all futures and options contracts on Globex.
Brent oil trades on the Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE.
Front-month Brent crude futures for January – which expire on Friday – rose 15 cents, or 0.24%, to $63.58 a barrel at 0738 GMT, after settling up 21 cents on Thursday.
The more active February contract changed hands at $62.99, also up 15 cents.
US West Texas Intermediate crude froze at $59.08 a barrel, up 43 cents, or 0.73%. There was no settlement on Thursday due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US Both contracts are headed for a fourth straight monthly loss, the longest losing streak since 2023, as expectations for higher global supply weighed on prices.
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 dragged on.
Brent and WTI are each set to close this week with gains of more than 1%.
“While a final peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine could eventually pave the way for sanctions to be eased on Russian oil producers, increasing global supply, such an outcome still appears distant,” said Sugandha Sachdeva, founder of SS WealthStreet, a New Delhi-based research firm.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that outline draft peace proposals discussed by the US and Ukraine could become the basis of future agreements to end the conflict in Ukraine, but that if not, Russia would fight on.
Putin added that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff plans to visit Moscow early next week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian and US delegations will meet this week to work out a formula discussed at talks in Geneva to bring peace and provide security guarantees for Kyiv.
“After several false dawns, participants are reluctant to position aggressively until concrete progress – or a breakdown materialises,” IG Markets analyst Tony Sycamore said in a research note.
On Sunday, OPEC+ is likely to 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 OPEC+ talks told Reuters.
Oil prices have also been buoyed by rising market bets that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next month, potentially boosting economic growth and bolstering energy demand.
A drop in the number of oil rigs operating in the US to a four-year low this week has also supported prices.
