Oil prices traded steady during Friday's Asian session, heading for modest weekly gains as declining United States gasoline and distillate inventories fueled demand expectations.
By 4:00 pm AEDT (5:00 am GMT) Brent crude and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude remained flat at US$76.46 and $72.48 per barrel respectively. Both benchmarks were set to end the week with gains of around 2.5%.
Fresh data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) overnight showed that while crude oil stockpiles increased, gasoline and distillate inventories declined as seasonal refinery maintenance reduced processing capacity.
Analysts at ANZ noted, "OPEC member states face rising breakeven levels for their oil, putting pressure on their fiscal budgets. The elevated budgetary needs of several OPEC members means they will continue to favour maximising revenue.
"We expect OPEC will delay the production hikes planned for early April. This would add 80-100kb/d per month to global oil supply. While such a move wouldn’t greatly impact oil market balances, the downside for prices is high if OPEC proceeds with production hikes."
Geopolitical tensions surrounding Ukraine remained in focus. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pushed back earlier in the week over U.S. and Russian efforts to negotiate a peace deal without Kyiv’s involvement.
However, following discussions with Trump's envoy on Thursday, Zelenskiy indicated that Ukraine was prepared to work swiftly toward a strong investment and security agreement with the United States.
Meanwhile, supply disruptions continued to support oil prices. Russia reported that crude flows via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), a key export route for Kazakhstan’s oil, were reduced by 30-40% on Tuesday due to a Ukrainian drone attack on a pumping station.
Despite this, industry sources told Reuters that Kazakhstan managed to pump record-high oil volumes, though it remained unclear how this was achieved given the pipeline capacity constraints.
