Crude oil prices showed a modest decline on Friday as fears that Hurricane Frances would disrupt US offshore oil production eased, ana-lysts said.
Worries over supply threats in Iraq and Russia lingered, but failed to have a significant impact on markets.
New York's reference contract, light sweet crude for October delivery, dipped seven cents to US$43.99 a barrel at the close on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In London, the price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in October fell US$0.34 cents to US$41.23 a barrel.
"Now it seems clear that Frances is not going toward the oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico, but into Florida, where there aren't any," Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish said.
"The fear was always that it would hit the Mexican Gulf and cause crude oil production to get shut in or disrupted, but if it heads up toward Florida, there should be no problem. People were fairly concerned yesterday, but it is not a factor right now," he added.
Phil Flynn at Alaron Trading said New York trading was uneventful as participants geared for the three-day Labor Day weekend.
"The market has no place to go," Flynn said. "It played out a lot of its fears and anxieties yesterday. Today, a lot of people were afraid to get back into the market because of a shortened session and the volatility of yesterday's session."
Still, the market faced enough jitters to prevent a big drop in prices.
Anglo-Dutch oil major Royal Dutch Shell began evacuating 175 nonessential workers from some of its platforms in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday as a "precautionary measure," Shell spokesman Simon Buerk said.
In Iraq, meanwhile, a huge fire blazed out of control on a vital northern pipeline to Turkey for a second day, halting exports, Iraqi oil officials and police said.
Saboteurs exploded a bomb on the strategic pipeline at 6:30pm Wednesday by the town of Riyadh 50km south of Kirkuk, Iraqi officials said.
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