Crude oil prices are lower Tuesday morning with investors looking ahead to some crucial U.S. economic data.
Besides a slew of economic reports due this morning, investors will also look ahead to the official crude inventory data.
Crude oil futures for July are down $0.23 or 0.22 percent at $104.13 a barrel,
A victory for the pro-European candidate Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine appears to be contributing to oil's decline to an extent.
Meanwhile, natural gas for July is down $0.009 or 0.19 percent at $4.397 per million btu.
Investors will be looking ahead to the durable goods order data from the U.S. Commerce Department, due at 8:30 am ET. Economists expect new orders to have declined 0.8 percent month-over-month, while excluding transportation orders may have edged down 0.1 percent.
At 9 am ET, the Federal House Finance Agency will release the results of its house price survey for March. The consensus estimate calls for a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent month-over-month increase in the index following a 0.6 percent increase in February.
Around the same, the S&P/Case-Shiller house price index for March is due, with economists expecting the 20-city house price index to increase by 0.7 percent month-over-month, slightly slower than the 0.8 percent increase in the previous month.
The flash estimate of Markit's service sector for the U.S., due at 9:45 am ET, is expected to show an increase in the service sector purchasing managers index to 55.4 in May from 54.2 in April.
At 10 am ET, the Conference Board will release the results of its consumer confidence survey. Economists expect the headline index to increase to 83 in May from 82.3 in April.
Also at 10 am ET, the Richmond Federal Reserve is due to release its manufacturing index for May. The index is expected to rise 2 points to 9. Finally, at 10:30 am ET, the Dallas Federal Reserve will release the results of its Texas manufacturing survey for May. The index is expected to slip to 9.6 from 11.7 in April.
