By Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Benchmark U.S. crude-oil futures lost some ground in electronic trading Tuesday, facing headwinds from a rising dollar, with the regular market due to reopen later in the day.
Crude-oil for March delivery CLH3 -1.48% traded at $95.53 a barrel in East Asian hours, off 12 cents from Monday morning levels, and 33 cents below the contract’s Friday settlement on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The Nymex was closed Monday for Presidents Day.
A slightly firmer U.S. dollar helped weigh on crude prices, with the ICE dollar index DXY -0.07% rising to 80.603, up from its late Monday level of 80.572.
A stronger U.S. unit can depress prices, as it makes dollar-denominated crude oil more expensive for holders of other currencies.
Meanwhile, London-traded April Brent North Sea crude futures UK:LCOJ3 -0.46% added 5 cents, or less than 0.1%, to trade at $117.43 a barrel, though it remained below its Friday settlement price of $117.66.
GFT Markets Technical Analyst Fawad Razaqzada said the chart for Brent crude “looks especially bullish due to the fact the buyers stepped in around $116.70, which was a resistance-turned-support level, suggesting that traders are still happy to buy the dips.”
Razaqzada put resistance for Brent at $118.00, while tipping Nymex crude to trade between $95 and $98 a barrel.
Meanwhile, a BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research report offered a longer-term forecast for Brent, which it sees in an average range of $100 to $130 a barrel through 2015.
But the Merrill Lynch analysts were more bearish for the Nymex benchmark. “In the United States, however, surging shale output creates a risk of $50-a-barrel [Nymex crude] on an 18-24 month horizon,” they said.
For the week ahead, a fresh round of nuclear-arms talks between Iran and the West offered some event risk for the market, as Tehran remains under sanctions that have significantly cut Iranian petroleum exports.
Upcoming U.S. economic data included January housing starts on Wednesday, and the Philadelphia Fed index and leading indicators, both slated for Thursday. See U.S. economic calendar.
Elsewhere in the energy complex, March natural gas NGH13 +2.34% rose 3 cents, or 0.8%, to $3.19 per million British thermal units.
Other energy futures saw less movement, however, as March gasoline RBH3 -0.12% traded flat at $3.15 a gallon, while March heating oil HOH3 -1.28% also held steady at $3.21 a gallon.
Michael Kitchen is Asia editor for MarketWatch and is based in Los Angeles.
