The Feb’25 Brent futures contract fell this afternoon from $72.85/bbl at 11:35 GMT down to $72.05/bbl shortly before 18:00 GMT (time of writing). In the news today, OPEC+ delayed the revival of its oil production by three months to April, originally scheduled to begin in January with a hike of 180kb/d, according to Bloomberg. OPEC+ is expected to unwind the output cuts at a much slower rate than previously planned, though no official timeline has been specified. In other news, rising costs have squeezed intermediaries out of Russian oil trade with India due to high funding costs in Russia and lack of access to Western funds, according to six trading sources cited by Reuters. Meanwhile, Russian oil flows to the Czech Republic via the Druzhba pipeline were seen resuming today after payment issues linked to the transit via Ukraine caused a halt, two sources told Reuters. Finally, Iraq’s oil exports fell slightly in November to 3.296mb/d from 3.327mb/d in October, according to a senior Oil Ministry official. At the time of writing, the Feb/Mar’25 and Feb/Aug’25 Brent futures spreads stand at $0.42/bbl and $1.28/bbl, respectively.
