Crude-oil futures traded nearly flat, pausing after a strong rally over the past three trading sessions that took front-month futures to an 18-month high.
Crude's advance was halted as the dollar gained strength against the euro overnight on renewed fears over Greece's financial situation, which put pressure on dollar-denominated oil prices, and ahead of an industry group's report on U.S. energy supplies due out Tuesday afternoon.
Light, sweet crude for March delivery recently traded flat at $86.62 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange traded four cents higher at $85.92 a barrel.
Despite crude's pause, many analysts expected crude prices to test the $90 per barrel level before long, citing that as the next level traders would aim for after breaking the year's high of $83.95 a barrel before Easter.
"There may be a lull as we await this week's supply and demand statistics, but we have swing objectives to $92.23 in crude, and the next major resistances is at $94.85," analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover told clients in a note Tuesday morning.
Jay Levine, a technical analyst with Enerjay LLC in Portland, Maine, said he sees the strong rally in crude advancing to $90 to $91 a barrel before making a retreat. "We're still very much in overbought territory," Mr. Levine said. "I would suspect that this rally that we've had, which has been quite significant, is nearer to an end than a beginning."
Crude oil jumped 2.1% to $86.62 a barrel Monday, reacting to a robust increase in jobs in Friday's employment report, plus an increase in home sales reported by the National Association of Relators and an increase in nonmanufacturing business activity reported by the Institute for Supply Management.
The next data points will be the oil supply data figures. The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, reports its figures after market close Tuesday, while the U.S. Energy Department is scheduled to release its data Wednesday morning.
Analysts are expecting the Energy Department to report a 1.2 million barrel increase in oil inventories for the week ended April 2, according to a Dow Jones Newswires survey. Gasoline stockpiles are seen falling 1.1 million barrels, while distillate inventories, including heating oil and diesel, are expected to drop by 1.4 million barrels. Refinery utilization is expected to rise 0.1 percentage point.
Front-month May reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB, recently traded 1.03 cents, or 0.4%, lower at $2.3399 a gallon. May heating oil recently traded 0.17 cents, or 0.1%, higher at $2.2692 a gallon.
