Crude for October delivery traded at $70.16 a barrel, up 21 cents on Globex by Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo after touching a low of $69.51 in the electronic trading session.
For the last two or three weeks, oil futures have has sold off early in the week, as they did Monday in New York, "apparently in anticipation of inventory figures released on Wednesday," said Charles Perry, president of energy-consulting firm Perry Management.
Analysts surveyed by Platts expect data from the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday morning in Washington to show a 1.9 million-barrel decline in crude stocks for the week ended Aug. 28.
Aside from the upcoming petroleum supply data, "sprinkled in are concerns about the economy," said Perry, and the recent sell off in the Chinese market was "discouraging, because the Chinese are such big consumers of oil now."
Crude prices closed below $70 Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the first session in two weeks, reducing most of their monthly gains as declines in global stock markets dampened sentiment toward energy trading.
Myra P. Saefong is MarketWatch's assistant global markets editor, based in Tokyo.
