Oil on track for weekly gain of over 3%

London — Brent oil futures dipped on Friday but held above $75 a barrel, remaining on track for weekly gains of more than 3% thanks to the slow recovery in output after two hurricanes in the US Gulf of Mexico.

Brent crude futures fell 27c, or 0.36%, to $75.40 a barrel by 8.38am GMT, erasing Thursday’s 21c gain.

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down 39c, or 0.54%, at $72.22 after settling unchanged in the previous session.

“Oil prices are slightly softer as offshore US production continues to slowly return … and as some countries still struggle to contain the Delta variant [of the coronavirus],” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda.

“Crude prices are having another good week despite broad weakness across commodities that stemmed from a resilient US dollar.”

The dollar climbed to a three-week high on Friday, making dollar-traded crude imports more expensive for countries using other currencies.

As of Thursday, about 28% of US Gulf of Mexico crude production remained offline, two-and-a-half weeks after Hurricane Ida hit.

“It’s still taking longer than people thought in terms of that coming back. That has been a supportive factor in the market,” said Commonwealth Bank commodities analyst Vivek Dhar.

“We’re going to go into more [supply] deficit conditions — that certainly seems to be the view.”

Preliminary data from the US Energy Information Administration showed US crude exports in September have slipped to between 2.34-million barrels per day (bpd) and 2.62-million bpd from 3-million bpd in late August.

Reuters