By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Crude oil prices stabilized in early trading in New York on Friday as life started to return to normal on the Gulf of Mexico coast in the wake of Hurricane Laura.
By 9:15 AM ET (1315 GMT). U.S. crude futures were flat at $43.06 a barrel, while Brent futures were down less than 0.1% at $45.58 a barrel.
Gasoline RBOB Futures, after a wild ride this week, were also stabilizing, up 0.7% from Thursday’s close at $1.2933 a gallon. That’s roughly where they started the week.
Newswire reports suggested that refineries had begun to restart operations on Friday, with Reuters singling out Valero’s installations at Port Arthur, where the worst damage had been expected.
Even so, it will likely take a day or two for offshore production to restart and for the backlog of ships currently waiting to get into the Houston Ship Channel to clear. Reuters reported that it was still standing at 50 ships, as of Friday morning.
Houston Port, along with Beaumont and Port Arthur, had all closed, reducing U.S. seaborne crude exports by over one million barrels a day and products exports by 830,000 b/d, Reuters cited intelligence firm Kpler as saying.
Prices were still also supported by signs of robust demand in the U.S. in the shape of another big draw on stockpiles last week. However, analysts note that global demand is starting to creak as the economic recovery flattens out in both the U.S. and Europe.
S&P Global Platts cited traders as saying that they expect key oil exporters in the Persian Gulf to cut their official selling prices for October by anything up to $2 a barrel. Demand in parts of Asia, their key market. is recovering very unevenly from the pandemic, with India in particular struggling to bring the virus' spread under control. India's crude imports were down 26% on the year in the second quarter.