OIL: Mid-Day Oil Summary: Crude Steady

Crude prices are steady holding within a $2/bbl range this week as they react to progress and doubts around a Ukraine peace plan. Thin trading is expected amid the Thanksgiving holiday. 

• Brent JAN 26 up 0.1% at 63.18$/bbl
• WTI JAN 26 up 0.3% at 58.8$/bbl
• OPEC+ meets on November 30, but no change in policy is expected after the group decided at the last meeting to leave production quotas unchanged in Q1 given seasonally soft demand. The group is likely to focus talks on the topic of members’ maximum production capacity, Reuters sources said.
• US special envoy Witkoff is to visit Russia next week to present the revised peace agreement. The US also said it won’t include security guarantees for Ukraine in the plan until there is a deal. Disagreements over territory are also unresolved and so an agreement still seems elusive.
• A Russia-Ukraine peace deal would allow geopolitical risk premiums to fade and freight rates to normalize leading to a stronger immediate decline in refined oil product prices, according to Goldman Sachs cited by Bloomberg.
• The Russian position towards a Ukrainian peace deal has not changed a lot since the Alaska summit according to Barclays energy analyst Amarpreet Singh speaking to CNBC.
• Black Sea CPC Blend oil exports are set to rise to 1.7m b/d in December from about 1.45m b/d in November, sources told Reuters.
• India’s imports of Russian crude are on track to rise to 1.8mb/d in November, the highest since 2.1mb/d in June, according to Kpler cited by Bloomberg.
• The amount of crude being stored at Russian oil fields jumped to a level seen only twice since early 2022, Bloomberg reports.
• The North Sea Buzzard oil field is expected to complete maintenance next month, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.