Oil tops $60 as Asia eyes US inventories

Benchmark crude for August delivery was up 76 cents to $60.28 a barrel Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Tuesday, the contract fell 17 cents to settle at $59.52.

Crude has loitered near $60 a barrel recently as investors try to gauge the strength of the global economy. Oil shot to an eight month intraday high of $73.38 a barrel on June 30, more than double the March price.

Weak gasoline demand in the U.S. has helped undermine investor optimism. U.S. motorists have pumped about 1 percent more gas this summer compared to 2008, but the amount remains significantly lower than in 2005 through 2007, according to the weekly Spending- Pulse report by MasterCard.

Traders will look to a weekly inventory report from the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration. Analysts expect the EIA’s gasoline inventory numbers to rise 750,000 barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of Mc- Graw-Hill Cos.

“The fundamentals are still weak,” said Clarence Chu, a trader with market maker Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. “It’s the summer driving season, inventories should be falling. It’s a bad sign.”

A solid start to second-quarter corporate results helped bolster crude prices. Profits announced by Goldman Sachs and Johnson & Johnson also helped boost analysts’ estimates.

Goldman expects crude to average $60 a barrel in July before rising to $75 in September.

In other Nymex trading, gasoline for August delivery rose 1.34 cents to $1.64 a gallon and heating oil gained 1.84 cents to $1.53. Natural gas for August delivery jumped 5.1 cents to $3.48 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, Brent prices rose 75 cents to $61.15 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.