Oil climbed more than 3% and Brent exceeded $80

Prices were sustained by US inflation, which was below expectations, which boosted the dollar and crude oil prices quoted in that currency.

Efforts by Keystone pipeline operator TC Energy to restart operations after a 14,000-barrel spill have been delayed by bad weather.

The company’s latest estimate to resume service on a stretch of the pipeline that runs to Patoka, Illinois, is December 14, company sources said.

TC Energy initially planned a partial restart on December 10, but rain and the break’s proximity to a waterway made it difficult to dig the pipeline.

The schedule is subject to change, but the company is still aiming for a full restart on December 20.

The Keystone pipeline delivers up to 600,000 barrels a day of Canadian heavy crude into the Midwestern United States and the spill is about to be ranked as one of the worst since 2010.

TC Energy cannot resume operations on the broken segment until federal regulators approve its restart plan.

Meanwhile, the European energy ministers failed to reach an agreement on a mechanism that limits wholesale gas prices, an issue that deeply divides the European Union, according to the AFP agency.

The talks will continue at a new ministerial meeting next Monday, while the heads of state and government could address the issue at their summit next Thursday.

The 27 member states of the EU have been facing each other for three weeks over a proposal from the European Commission, to limit the price of certain futures contracts in the reference TTF gas market for one year, with the aim of counteracting new price rises and given the proximity of the hard core of the boreal winter.

For his part, The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) maintained its forecasts for oil demand growth to 2023, despite slowing activity in China, according to its monthly report published today.

Global oil demand growth forecast for 2022 “remains unchanged at 2.5 million barrels per day,” OPEC said in its December report.

Global demand was also revised downward for the first quarter of 2023.

For the whole of next year, the estimated growth in demand for crude oil remained at 2.2 million barrels per day.

The report adds that these forecasts are subject to “numerous uncertainties” due to global economic performance, both to the confinement measures related to covid-19, especially in China, and to the ongoing geopolitical tensions.