Traders also expect to see a Russian export schedule for January-March on Friday or early next week showing more oil supplies to China and less to Baltic Sea ports.

There were no bids or offers for Urals, Azeri BTC, CPC Blend or Siberian Light in the Platts window on Thursday.

Urals differentials in northwest Europe hit four-year highs on Wednesday due to an outage on the Forties pipeline and expectations of low Urals supplies in January.

Rosneft's new shareholder, China's CEFC, awarded a spot tender for two Urals cargoes of 80,000 tonnes loading in January without specific loading dates, traders said.

There was no information on the tender winner.

Kazakhstan's crude production rose in January-November 2017 to 78.564 million tonnes from 70.830 million tonnes over the same period last year, the Kazakh energy ministry's statistics committee said.

Production at the giant Kashagan oilfield rose to 0.82 million tonnes in November from 0.72 million tonnes in October.

Azerbaijan's oil output totalled 35.4 million tonnes in the January to November period, down 6.1 percent from a year earlier, the South Caucasus nation's statistics committee said on Thursday.