Oil trades lower Friday morning now that oil operations along the Gulf of Mexico are up and running again, Reuters reports.

Looking at price development, US benchmark crude West Texas Intermediate is down 0.4 percent Friday, while European reference oil Brent fell by 0.3 percent between midnight and Friday morning.

"Oil prices are slightly softer as offshore U.S. production continues to slowly return and as return of normal across large parts of Asia hit some road bumps and as some countries still struggle to contain the delta variant spread," says Edward Moya, OANDA senior market analyst, to the news agency.

However, relative to closing Central European trading hours Thursday, oil is selling higher. A barrel of Brent goes for USD 75.50 Friday morning against USD 74.85 Thursday afternoon. WTI concurrently trades for USD 72.44 compared to USD 71.88.

28 percent of Mexican Gulf oil operations remained shuttered Thursday – two and a half weeks after hurricane Ida went ashore.

"It’s still taking longer than people thought in terms of that coming back. That’s been a supportive factor in the market," Commonwealth Bank Commodities Analyst Vivek Dhar tells Reuters.

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