MOSCOW, Jan 2 — Oil prices edged up on the first day of trade in 2026, after last year posting their biggest annual loss since 2020, as Ukrainian drones targeted Russian oil facilities and a United States blockade pressured Venezuela’s exports.
Brent crude futures climbed 35 cents on Friday to US$61.20 a barrel by 0409 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude was at US$57.76 a barrel, up 34 cents.
Russia and Ukraine have traded allegations of attacks on civilians on New Year’s despite talks overseen by US President Donald Trump aimed at bringing an end to the nearly four-year war.
Kyiv has been intensifying strikes against Russian energy infrastructure in recent months, aiming to cut off Moscow’s sources of financing for its military campaign in Ukraine.
In the latest action by Trump’s administration to increase pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Washington on Wednesday imposed sanctions on four companies and associated oil tankers it said were operating in Venezuela’s oil sector.
The US blockade aims to keep sanctioned tankers from entering or leaving Venezuela and is forcing state energy company PDVSA to resort to extreme solutions to avoid shutting down refining units as residual fuel inventories build up.
The Brent and WTI benchmarks recorded annual losses of nearly 20 per cent last year, the steepest since 2020, as concerns about oversupply and tariffs outweighed geopolitical risks. It was the third straight year of losses for Brent, the longest such streak on record.
The muted movement in oil prices reflected a struggle between short-term geopolitical risks and longer-term market fundamentals that point towards oversupply ahead of next week’s OPEC+ (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies) meeting, Priyanka Sachdeva, a senior market analyst at Phillip Nova said in a note, with WTI prices skewed towards the US$55 to US$65 per barrel range in the first quarter.
OPEC+ will meet virtually on Sunday.
Traders are widely expecting OPEC+ to continue pausing output hikes in the first quarter, said Sparta Commodities senior analyst June Goh.
“2026 will be an important year on assessing OPEC+ decisions for balancing supply,” she said, adding that China would continue to build crude stockpiles in the first half that would provide a floor to oil prices.
In the US, oil production hit a record high of 13.87 million barrels per day in October, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday. Crude stocks fell while gasoline and distillate inventories rose last week on robust refining activity, the EIA reported.
