Oil rises above $60 as traders eye US inventories

SINGAPORE (AP) - Oil prices peeked above $60 a barrel Wednesday in Asia as investors looked to a weekly inventory report for clues on U.S. gasoline demand.

Benchmark crude for August delivery was up 76 cents to $60.28 a barrel by early afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading 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 for the last few days 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, up more than double the price in March.

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 SpendingPulse report by MasterCard released Tuesday.

Traders will be eyeing a weekly inventory report from the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration on Wednesday. Analysts expect the EIA's gasoline inventory numbers to rise 750,000 barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-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 has helped bolster crude prices. Profits announced by Goldman Sachs and Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday topped analysts' estimates.

Goldman said in a separate weekly energy report that it 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.