U.S. crude futures edged to above $97 a barrel on Tuesday as cold weather in Europe boosted heating fuel demand, pushing Brent oil to a six-month high a day earlier.
FUNDAMENTALS
* NYMEX crude for March delivery was up 36 cents at $97.27 a barrel by 0036 GMT, after settling down 93 cents at $96.91 on Monday.
* London Brent crude for March delivery was up 57 cents at $116.50 a barrel, after settling up $1.35 at $115.93, its highest settlement since Aug. 2.
* European gasoil led gains across the complex, rising more than 3.5 percent as bitter weather killed another 33 people in Europe..
* Italy announced that it would allow electricity providers to fire up oil-fueled generators to limit natural gas usage after six days of reduced supplies from Russia.
* A bullish target at $118.65 per barrel has been established for Brent oil as it is riding on powerful technical drivers, Wang Tao, a Reuters market analyst, said on Tuesday.
* President Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing stricter sanctions on Iran and its central bank, saying new powers to freeze assets were needed because Iranian banks were concealing transactions, the White House said.
* The Paris-based International Energy Agency may reduce its world oil demand forecast for 2012 this week due to a weaker outlook for the world economy, even though some evidence points to stronger consumption in the latter part of this year. Two other forecasts, from OPEC and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, will also be released this week.
* AccuWeather.com expects temperatures in the U.S. Northeast, the biggest regional market for heating oil, to be mostly average above normal for the next few days, then cool to below normal later this week and early next week before warming again.
* The Japanese government aims to restart the No.3 and No.4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co's Ohi nuclear power plant around April pending local authorities' approval, the Yomiuri newspaper said on Tuesday, the first restart since the Fukushima atomic disaster last March.
Japanese utilities' consumption of low-sulphur fuel oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) jumped last year to offset lost nuclear power output amid public anxieties following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami last March.
* Traders are bracing for weekly inventory data, with the initial report coming from the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday after close.
In a Reuters poll, domestic crude stocks were forecast to have increased by 2.6 million barrels in the week to Feb. 3. Distillate stocks were projected down 600,000 barrels and gasoline stocks were expected to show a 200,000 barrel increase, the poll also showed.
MARKETS NEWS
* U.S. stocks closed slightly lower on Monday as lingering questions about Europe's debt crisis and corporate earnings overshadowed growing optimism about economic growth after a five-week rally.
The S&P has risen about 7 percent so far this year, helped by a slew of better-than-expected U.S. economic data, which was capped by Friday's solid jobs report.
* The euro held steady in Asia on Tuesday as markets remained sanguine that Greece will eventually clinch a rescue package, even as the country's political leaders delayed their decision to accept painful terms by yet another day.
Failure to secure the 130 billion euro ($170 billion) rescue would risk pushing Athens into a chaotic debt default and destabilise the entire euro zone, an outcome deemed too extreme to contemplate.
DATA/EVENTS
* The following data is expected on Tuesday: (Time in GMT)
- 0500 Japan Leading indicator/Dec
- 0745 France Trade balance/Dec
- 1100 Germany Industrial output/Dec
- 1245 US ICSC chain stores/weekly
- 1355 US Redbook/weekly
- 1500 US IBD economic optimism/Feb
- 2130 US API oil report/weekly
- EIA releases Short Term Energy Outlook