TOKYO- Oil prices pared early gains on Monday, off more than three-week highs reached earlier in the session as a powerful hurricane ploughing through the Gulf of Mexico forced shutdowns and evacuations of hundreds of offshore oil platforms.
US gasoline prices RBc1 rose more than 3 percent as power outages added to refinery closures on the Gulf coast.
Brent was up 27 cents or 0.4 percent at $72.97 a barrel by 0337 GMT. It rose more than 11 percent last week in anticipation of disruptions to oil production from Ida.
US oil turned negative and was down by 6 cents at $68.68 a barrel, having jumped a little over 10 percent over last week.
The benchmarks hit highs not seen since early August, $73.69 and $69.64, respectively, earlier in the session, as Ida slammed into the coast near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, a hub of the Gulf’s offshore energy industry.
“It’s still early days to know the full impact of Hurricane Ida,” said Vivek Dhar, commodities analyst at Commonweath Bank of Australia.
“Oil products, like gasoline and diesel, are likely to see prices rise more acutely from refinery outages, especially if there are difficulties in bringing refineries and pipelines back online,” he added.
