By Erwin Seba HOUSTON (Reuters) – Oil prices posted small gains on Friday but were headed for a weekly loss of nearly 3% after the IEA forecast a growing glut and U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to meet again to discuss Ukraine. Brent crude futures settled at $61.29 a barrel, up 23 cents, or 0.38%. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures ended at $57.54 a barrel, up 8 cents, or 0.14%. On Thursday, Trump and Putin agreed to another summit on the war in Ukraine, to be held in Hungary in the next two weeks. It comes on top of a cease-fire agreement that ends, at least temporarily, the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy went to the White House on Friday to push for more military support, including US long-range Tomahawk missiles, as Washington pressured India and China to stop buying Russian oil. “We had the one-time peace deal in the Middle East, Iran was neutralized and now Ukraine; an unprecedented amount of risk has come out of the market,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group. This week’s drop was also partly due to rising trade tensions between the US and China, which added to concerns about an economic slowdown and lower demand for energy. “It just destroys confidence,” said Jorge Montepeque, managing director at Onyx Capital Group, who expects the US economy to be quickly affected. On Friday, an overnight fire at BP Plc’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery was expected to affect only the Midwest market, Flynn said. Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, said the market around the Great Lakes is expected to jump. “Great Lakes Spots Gasoline Prices Rising Overnight on BP Refinery Fire Could Lead to Prices Cycling Soon,” DeHaan posted on X. “For now, wholesale prices indicate about a 20 cent per liter increase.” Capping crude oil prices was the International Energy Agency’s outlook for a growing supply glut in 2026. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Thursday that U.S. crude inventories rose by 3.5 million barrels last week to 423.8 million barrels, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a rise of 288,000 barrels. The larger-than-expected build in crude inventories was largely due to lower refining utilization as refineries turn around in the fall. [EIA/S] The data also showed a rise in US production to 13.636 million barrels per day, the highest on record. (Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston, Anna Hirtenstein and Robert Harvey in London. Additional reporting by Nicole Jao in New York and Colleen Howe in Beijing; Editing by Louise Heavens, Chris Reese and Edmund Klamann)
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