The Nov’25 Brent futures initially traded down to the $68.50/bbl level before climbing back towards $69.30/bbl, where prices have faced resistance over the past day. The next hurdle would be the psychological $70/bbl level. In the news, Indian officials have told the Trump administration that a significant reduction in Russian oil imports would require Washington to instead allow crude purchases from sanctioned suppliers Iran and Venezuela. Slovak PM Robert Fico said on Thursday that Slovakia expects to find “common ground” with the US after pressure to end Russian energy purchases, defending receiving supplies from Moscow and stating that Slovakia’s purchases amount to 2% of Russia’s revenue and have “no impact on financing the war”. Russia will introduce a partial ban on diesel exports until the end of the year and extend an existing ban on gasoline exports, said deputy PM Alexander Novak. The diesel ban applies to re-sellers but not to producers. The gasoline ban covers producers as well as re-sellers, but does not affect inter-governmental agreements between Russia and a number of other countries, such as Mongolia. Finally, the front Nov/Dec and 6-month Nov/May’26 spreads are at $0.84/bbl and $2.22/bbl respectively.
