NEW YORK, Jan 5, 2026, 02:53 ET — Market closed
- Brent crude futures were down 21 cents at $60.54 a barrel, while U.S. WTI slipped 28 cents to $57.04.
- Traders weighed Venezuela’s political shock against a market still braced for oversupply.
- Focus turns to sanctions policy signals and U.S. crude inventory data later this week.
Oil prices eased in early trading on Monday, with the market looking past Venezuela’s political upheaval and back to the weight of global supply. Brent crude futures were down 0.4% at $60.54 a barrel by 0452 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell 0.5% to $57.04.
The pullback lands as crude starts 2026 on the defensive after last year’s steep decline, leaving traders quick to fade geopolitical risk unless barrels are immediately at risk. OPEC+ — the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus allies including Russia — kept its output policy unchanged at a meeting on Sunday, sticking with a pause in further hikes for January through March, the group said.
That matters now because Venezuela is both a near-term disruption story and a longer-term supply story — and those point in different directions for prices. A disruption tightens availability. A credible path to more exports adds to a market already grappling with a supply overhang.
In Venezuela, the U.S. strike that extracted President Nicolas Maduro did not damage oil production or refining facilities, sources familiar with PDVSA operations said. The U.S. blockade and seizure of two cargoes left Venezuelan exports “completely paralysed” from Jan. 1, the report said, forcing PDVSA to begin cutting output as storage filled. Sources said exports fell to about 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in December — roughly half November’s level — while Chevron shipments of around 100,000 bpd continued under U.S. authorisation despite sanctions. Reuters
Analysts are also sketching out the longer game. Venezuela holds about 303 billion barrels of reserves, or roughly 17% of the world’s total, Energy Institute data show, but output has been constrained for years by sanctions and underinvestment. JPMorgan analysts led by Natasha Kaneva said production could rise to 1.3–1.4 million bpd within two years under a stable transition, and to 2.5 million bpd over the next decade, adding that those expectations were not reflected in the “back end” of the futures curve — prices for contracts years out. Goldman Sachs analysts led by Daan Struyven wrote in a Jan. 4 note: “We see ambiguous but modest risks to oil prices in the short-run from Venezuela depending on how U.S. sanctions policy evolves.” Reuters
For now, the supply buffer elsewhere is doing much of the work. Traders say it takes more than headlines to rebuild a risk premium when OPEC+ has already lifted targets in recent months and the market is fixated on whether supply growth outpaces demand.
Near-term levels are also in play. Brent hovering around $60 and WTI in the high-$50s keeps attention on whether sellers press the market lower into the U.S. session, or whether bargain-hunting emerges ahead of key data.
The risks cut both ways. Any civil unrest that disrupts export terminals, deeper PDVSA output cuts triggered by storage constraints, or a tighter sanctions net could jolt prices higher in the short run. A loosening of the embargo, by contrast, would raise the odds of more barrels hitting an already heavy market.
The next concrete test is U.S. inventory data, with the Energy Information Administration’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. ET — the first report using EIA’s new information-release system.
