NYMEX Crude $ 48.69 DN $.1200
NY Harbor ULSD $1.5644 UP $.0012
NYMEX Gasoline $1.4996 UP $.0291

NEWS
Oil futures on Tuesday settled marginally lower, struggling for direction throughout much of the session, as traders continued to assess the impact of a preliminary OPEC output pact, and awaited weekly data that are expected to show an increase in U.S. crude supplies.

November West Texas Intermediate crude added lost 12 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $48.69 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It settled at $48.81 on Monday, the highest close for a front-month contract since early July. December Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange slipped 2 cents, or less than 0.1%, to end at $50.87 a barrel.

Gains in the dollar, as gauged by a 0.5% climb in the ICE U.S. Dollar Index also weighed on crude futures, with commodities priced in the buck, like oil, moving sharply lower. Strength in the greenback tends to pressure assets pegged to the currency, making them more expensive to buyers using other monetary units.

Traders awaited an update due Wednesday from the Energy Information Administration on weekly petroleum supplies. The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, releases its own figures late Tuesday. Analysts polled by S&P Global Platts forecast a climb of 2 million barrels in crude stockpiles for the week ended Sept. 30. They also expect to see a fall of 500,000 barrels in gasoline supplies and a declines of 1.7 million barrels for distillates, which include heating oil.

For WTI oil, “we are maintaining our view that the price will move higher in the coming weeks,” said Nico Pantelis, head of research at Secular Investor. “The next soft target is $50…but we think we could move higher within the $50-$60 range for oil, up until the next [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting] meeting on Nov. 30th, in Vienna, Austria.” Oil prices had rallied sharply in the past week following a much-touted agreement at an informal OPEC meeting in Algiers. The group’s oil ministers agreed on a need to cut production and are expected to hammer out the final details of an agreement at their next official meeting Nov. 30 in Vienna. Before these developments, the inability by OPEC to reach consensus over a production ceiling had been one of the driving forces behind a more than two-year-long slump in oil prices. Indications that Russia, which isn’t in OPEC, planned to join any supply agreement was also helping to fuel the recent recovery. “We have to remember that the Russians and Saudis found an accord prior to the Algiers meeting, so there’s obviously a very strong will to carry out the agreement,” said Stuart Ive, private client manager at OM Financial. He added that OPEC members also have a financial incentive to strike an accord: “Oil producing nations really have become so cash-strapped that there’s a real driving force to see this through.”