oil futures were slightly lower friday pulling back from sevenweek highs as crude production in the gulf of mexico makes a slow comeback from hurricane ida west texas intermediate crude for october delivery cl00 clv21 fell 41 cents or 06 to 7220 a barrel on the new york mercantile exchange november brent crude brn00 brnx21  the global benchmark was off 36 cents or 05 at 7531 a barrel on ice futures europe wti futures were on track for a weekly rise of 35 while brent was up 32 brent closed thursday at a sevenweek high while wti ended unchanged a day after it closed at its highest since july 30 the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement late thursday estimated that 282 of crude production in the gulf of mexico remains shut in equal to around 513878 barrels a day more than 39 of naturalgas production is also shut in equivalent to 87863 million cubic feet of output according to the bsee the slow return of crude output following ida which made landfall on the louisiana gulf coast on aug 29 has been credited with helping drive crude higher in september but analysts said other structural factors also remain in play “while oilmarket sentiment has clearly inflected more positively over recent weeks over 27 million barrels have evaporated from the us supply side of the equation hurricane ida is not the driving force behind the bullishness” said michael tran analyst at rbc capital markets in a note he observed that while wti the us benchmark has recently outperformed brent the discount for north american barrels remains wider than 3 a barrel “meaning that though domestic balances have tightened considerably the constructive tone to the market is being driven by more structural themes than simply hurricanes”