Investing.com - Crude oil prices remained lower on Tuesday, but losses were expected to remain limited as overal optimism over the rebalancing of the market continued to lend strong support to the commodity.
The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude February contract was down 18 cents or about 0.30% at $64.14 a barrel by 10:00 a.m. ET (14:00 GMT), still close to last Thursday' three-year peak of $64.77.
Elsewhere, Brent oil for March delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London lost 57 cents or about 0.78% to $69.71 a barrel, not far from a three-year higher of $70.05 also hit last Thursday.
Oil prices have remained supported in recent weeks amid ongoing optimism that OPEC-led output cuts would continue to drain the market of excess supplies.
Futures have added around 13% since early December, benefiting from production cut efforts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia. The producers agreed in December to extend current oil output cuts 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.
However, analysts and traders have warned that the recent rally could encourage U.S. shale oil producers to ramp up production as they look to take advantage of higher prices.
Elsewhere, gasoline futures fell 0.11% to $1.857 a gallon, while natural gas futures lost 2.78% to $3.111 per million British thermal units.