Crude falls slightly but supply continues to worry

Crude oil prices fell on Friday but were up from where they were at the beginning of the week.

The major issue that affected prices was supply, with the weather and sabotage providing worrisome news.

Hurricane Katrina entered the Gulf of Mexico on Friday but the course she would take still wasn’t clear, so that it was difficult to say whether or not oil producing regions would be affected.

In addition, an attack on an oil well near Kirkuk, in the northern oil fields of Iraq, emphasized the vulnerabilities of oil production installations.

This is true especially in the wake of protest attacks on the oil industry in Ecuador last week that cut production for several days, although protestors signed an agreement bringing an end to that conflict on Thursday. Production in Ecuador is back on line, but is still running around 50,000 barrels per day behind, and the nation’s oil minister has said that some wells may have been permanently damaged and might not ever be able to return to full production.

With all these concerns, October contract Brent crude on the International Petroleum Exchange fell by $1.40 on Friday to $64.87 per barrel, although that was one percent higher than it was at the beginning of the week. West Texas Intermediate crude oil for October delivery also was 1 percent higher than it was as the week began, but on Friday it lost $1.36 to $66.13 per barrel.