Oil falls as storm-hit U.S. supply trickles back into market | Reuters

Oil falls as storm-hit U.S. supply trickles back into market | Reuters

Oil prices fell on Friday as energy companies in the U.S. 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. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 64 cents to settle at $71.97 a barrel.For the week, Brent was up 3.3% and U.S. crude was up 3.2%, supported bytight 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 U.S. 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 U.S. oil production is returning, oil as expected trades lower," said Nishant Bhushan, Rystad Energy's oil markets analyst.