Slight gains made in oil prices while the world waits for the next round of attacks between U.S. and Iran

Crude oil prices made only a slight gain on Friday as the U.S. and Iran headed into the weekend leaving oil investors driven by mood and fear, as one analyst put it.

The modest increase came as President Trump maintained the U.S. effectively reopened the strategic Strait of Hormuz with 18 million barrels of oil crossing under American naval protection on Tuesday. It’s about the same as the 20 million bpd that moved through the straight prior to the start of the war. However, numbers outside the U.S. government can be verified. U.S. military said 44 vessels crossed over September 1st and 2nd but Kpler recorded 11 visible commodity vessel crossings Tuesday and Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded a dozen.

A U.S. campaign to throttle Iran’s economy by blockading its oil exports and stopping sanctions evasion is growing increasingly difficult to withstand, three senior Iranian sources said.

West Texas Intermediate rose $0.04 a barrel or 0.04% and settled Friday at $91.34 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, managed a gain of $0.58 for an increase of 0.61% to $96.10 a barrel.

Natural gas prices also made a more than 1% gain for the day, settling up $0.031 or 1.06% at $2.944 MMBtu.

Only 5 of our Oklahoma energy stocks managed gains on Friday while the remainder experienced drops in the value of their shares. Stardust Power dropped more than 10% and NGL Energy Partners declined by about 3%.

Alliance Resource Partners LP