By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures erased mild early losses in electronic trading Tuesday but remained in a tight range around the previous day’s settlement price, with news that Iran launched drills to test missiles helping to support prices. Light, sweet crude-oil futures for delivery in August CLQ2 +0.85% rose 11 cents, or 0.1%, to $83.86 a barrel on Globex, trading near the session’s highs. The front-month contract had earlier hit a low of $83.33 but managed to recover. Iran on Monday launched drills to test missiles that were capable of hitting targets as far away as Israel, according to a Wall Street Journal report. An army general in the oil exporting nation reportedly said the country wouldn’t “sit idly� by as the U.S. and Europe built a missile-defense shield program that could target Iran. The drills came as a U.S. and European embargoes on Iranian oil recently took effect. Citi Futures analyst Tim Evans said the Iranian rhetoric was “likely just bluster, but it is the kind of noise that has sparked price rallies in the past.� The mild gains came as Asian stock markets advanced and U.S. equity futures edged up tentatively. Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -0.07% futures were up 2 points at 12,778, while Standard & Poor’s 500 Index SPX +0.25% futures gained 0.1% to 1,359.40. Read Asia Markets. Elsewhere in the energy complex, August futures for heating-oil HOQ2 +0.76% and gasoline RBQ2 +0.72% rose by 0.4% to $2.69 per gallon and by 0.5% to $2.64 per gallon, respectively. Natural-gas futures for delivery in the same month NGQ12 +0.32% advanced 0.2% to $2.83 per million British thermal units. Varahabhotla Phani Kumar is a reporter in MarketWatch's Hong Kong bureau.

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