Brent crude oil futures rose on Friday as drawn-out Russia-Ukraine peace talks kept geopolitical risks elevated, while traders kept one eye on the outcome of an OPEC+ meeting on Sunday for clues about potential output changes.
However, U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were frozen after a system outage at exchange operator CME Group.
Traders said they were informed by CME just before 0300 GMT of the halt due to a cooling issue at its CyrusOne data centres, which affected trading of all futures and options contracts on Globex. Brent oil trades on the Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE.
Front-month Brent crude futures – which expire on Friday – rose 24 cents, or 0.38 per cent, to $63.58 a barrel at 0452 GMT, after settling up 21 cents on Thursday. The more active February contract changed hands at $63.10, up 23 cents.
