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Brent futures settled down 81 cents, or 0.9%, at $86.66 per
barrel, up just 3 cents from last week's settlement. U.S. crude
fell $1.33, or 1.6 %, to settle at $79.68, 2% lower on the week.
Oil loadings from Russia's Baltic ports are set to rise by 50%
this month from December as sellers try to meet strong demand in
Asia and benefit from rising global energy prices, traders said
and Reuters calculations showed.
Urals and KEBCO crude oil loadings from Ust-Luga over Feb. 1-10
may rise to 1.0 million tonnes from 0.9 million in the plan for
the same period of January, traders also.
"If Russian supply remains strong heading into next month, oil
is probably going to continue to trend lower," said John Kilduff,
partner at Again Capital LLC in New York.
He added that profit taking ahead of the weekend may also have
driven prices lower.
U.S. energy firms this week kept oil and natural gas rigs steady
at 771, energy services firm Baker Hughes Co BKR.O said in its
closely followed report on Friday.
Meanwhile, OPEC+ delegates meet next week to review crude
production levels, with sources from the oil producer group
expecting no change to current output policy.
The U.S. Federal Reserve's next decision on interest rates will
be made at meeting over Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 against a backdrop of
a dip in inflation and gross domestic product that grew by a
faster than expected 2.9% in the fourth quarter.
A 4.2 million barrel build this week in stocks at Cushing, the
pricing hub for NYMEX oil futures, also weighed on the market. [EIA/S]
In China, critically ill COVID-19 cases are down 72% from a peak
early this month while daily deaths among COVID-19 patients in
hospitals have dropped by 79% from their peak, pointing to a
normalisation of the Chinese economy and boosting expectations
of a recovery in oil demand.
(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Additional reporting
by Julia Payne in London and Sudarshan Varadhan in Singapore;
Editing by David Goodman, Kirsten Donovan and David Gregorio)
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