NEW YORK- Oil prices fell as energy companies in the US Gulf of Mexico restarted production after back-to-back hurricanes in the region shut output.
Brent crude futures fell 33 cents to settle at $75.34 a barrel. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 64 cents to settle at $71.97 a barrel. Last week, Brent was up 3.3 percent and US crude was up 3.2 percent, supported by tight supplies due to the hurricane outages.
Friday’s slump followed five straight sessions of rises for Brent. On Wednesday, Brent hit its highest since late July, and US crude hit its highest since early August.
“The reason oil prices reached such highs in the last few days was clearly supply disruptions and drawdowns in inventories, so now that US oil production is returning, oil as expected trades lower,” said Nishant Bhushan, Rystad Energy’s oil markets analyst. – Reuters
