Investing.com - Crude oil prices pulled back from session highs remained supported on Tuesday, as the shutdown of a major pipeline in the North Sea sparked fears over supply disruptions, while market participants also focused on this week's U.S. inventory data.
The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude January contract was down 19 cents or about 0.33% at $57.86 a barrel by 10:00 a.m. ET (14:00 GMT), off session highs of $58.55.
Elsewhere, Brent oil for February delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London was up still up 10 cents or about 0.14% at $64.80 a barrel, after climbing to a more than two-year peak of $65.83 earlier in the day.
Prices strengthened after the Forties pipeline, the UK's biggest North Sea oil pipeline which was scheduled to pump 406,000 barrels per day (bpd) in December, was shut down on Monday after cracks were found.
Meanwhile markets participants were looking ahead to the American Petroleum Institute's weekly inventory data due later Tuesday. It will be followed on Wednesday by official data from the Energy Information Administration.
Fears that rising U.S. output would dampen OPEC’s efforts to rid the market of excess supplies have been recently weighing on sentiment, according to market participants.
The producer group, along with some non-OPEC members led by Russia, agreed last week to extend current oil output cuts for a further nine months until the end of 2018.
The deal to cut oil output by 1.8 million barrels a day (bpd) was adopted last winter by OPEC, Russia and nine other global producers. The agreement was due to end in March 2018, having already been extended once.
Elsewhere, gasoline futures were up 0.78% at $1.739 a gallon, while natural gas futures declined 1.73% to $2.777 per million British thermal units.