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 Brent was down 91 cents at $56.42 a barrel. Earlier, it touched a
post-2009 low of $55.48, having averaged around $110 a barrel
between 2011 and 2013.
Front-month U.S. crude for February delivery settled down 58 cents a
barrel at $52.69, before a steep 50-cent drop post-settlement.
The U.S. dollar index was 0.9 percent stronger on Friday. The
combination of the supply glut and the strong dollar has been a
"double whammy" for crude oil prices, said Walter Zimmerman, chief
technical analyst at United-ICAP.
"This is a long-term cyclical downtrend," Zimmerman said. "It's
going to take a while for prices to fall low enough to cut off that
excess production."
Low trading volume also made the market vulnerable to knee-jerk
reactions.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is suffering from
pneumonia and temporarily needed help to breathe through a tube on
Friday but the procedure was successful and his condition was now
stable, the royal court said.
OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which
includes Saudi Arabia, declined to restrict oil output in November
despite pressure from its member nations.
Iran's deputy foreign minister urged regional rival Saudi Arabia on
Thursday to take action to support oil prices, saying producer
countries across the Middle East will be hurt unless the price slump
is reversed.
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In the United States, benchmark oil prices took some support from
data on Wednesday showing inventories fell by 1.8 million barrels in
the last week, but an increase of 2 million barrels at the U.S.
crude contract's delivery hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, kept prices
under pressure.
traders were searching for a bottom in U.S. crude around the $52 a
barrel mark, but Friday contained mostly sideways trading due to
thin volume, said Carl Larry, director of business development at
Frost & Sullivan.
"We're all waiting for the new money to come in next week," he said.
(Additional reporting by Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York, David
Sheppard in London, Meeyoung Cho in Seoul and Jane Xie in Singapore;
Editing by Jason Neely, David Holmes, Bernadette Baum, Peter
Galloway and Nick Zieminski)
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