On Wednesday, oil prices hovered above $81 a barrel in Asia after a report showed mixed evidence about US crude demand.

At midday time in Singapore for April delivery, Benchmark crude was up 5 cents to $81.54 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract lost 38 cents to settle at $81.49 on Tuesday.

About 17 percent, oil has jumped since early last month on increased investor confidence in this year’s global economic growth. But crude demand from the U.S., the world’s largest consumer of oil, has remained sluggish.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, Crude inventories jumped last week by 6.5 million barrels. Analysts, eyeing a cold weather spell in much of the U.S. this month, had expected a drop of 1.6 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

However, inventories of gasoline and distillates fell more than analysts expected, the API said.The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration is scheduled to announce its supply report later Wednesday.

In other Nymex trading in April contracts, heating oil rose 0.44 cent to $2.0942 a gallon, and gasoline gained 0.83 cent to $2.2686 a gallon. Natural gas was down 1.1 cents at $4.505 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Brent crude was up 9 cents at $80.00 on the ICE futures exchange in London.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com)

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