Traders await data on U.S. petroleum inventories, FOMC minutes By Polya Lesova & Claudia Assis, MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Oil rose Tuesday, as price momentum and expectations of higher demand won over a rising dollar and a weaker U.S. stock market. Crude oil for May delivery gained 31 cents to $86.93 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract earlier hit an intraday high of $86.85 a barrel in electronic trading. "This is still a big momentum play," said Jim Ritterbusch, president at Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Illinois. "This up move has nothing to do with fundamentals ... this is a lot about expectations, about demand improvement way down the road, and it's a lot about momentum and a bullish-looking (technical) chart picture," he said. Without much technical resistance in the horizon, "it's going to be difficult to stop this advance," he added. A stronger dollar and a losing equity market, normally bearish factors for oil, didn't dent gains as "the market tone seems to be intent on going on higher," said Kyle Cooper, managing director of IAF Advisors in Houston, Texas. Crude futures rose 2% on Monday to end at $86.62 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, their highest closing level since October 2008. U.S. stocks opened lower Tuesday after reaching 18-month highs Monday. They've pared losses, however, with the S&P 500 (SPX 1,187, -0.17, -0.01%) recently less than a point and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU 10,957, -17.01, -0.16%) down 7 points. The dollar kept its strength against major rivals. The dollar index (DXY 81.55, +0.46, +0.56%) , which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, rose 0.5% to 81.50. The euro lost ground on renewed concerns about Greece and a planned aid package from the International Monetary Fund. Investors awaited industry data on petroleum inventories and the minutes from the latest meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday. The American Petroleum Institute will report data on U.S. petroleum inventories on Tuesday afternoon. The Energy Information Administration will release a separate report on supplies on Wednesday morning. Analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires project an increase of 1.2 million barrels in crude inventories for the week ended April 2. Traders are awaiting the release of the minutes from the March 16 meeting of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee. They are due at 2 p.m. Eastern.

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