By Polya Lesova & Moming Zhou, MarketWatch NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures posted modest gains Wednesday, reclaiming the $80-a-barrel mark as upbeat economic data and a weaker U.S. dollar boosted sentiment in energy trading. Investors also digested petroleum inventories data reported by an industry group, while awaiting the more closely-watched government data due later in the morning. Also on the radar is the Federal Reserve's decision on monetary policy and interest rates, which is due to be made public at 2:15 p.m. Eastern. Crude for December delivery gained 67 cents, or 0.8%, to $80.26 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier, the contract had touched an intraday high at $80.77 a barrel. The gain "is not very much related to oil market fundamentals. It's more related to what's happening on the foreign-exchange side," said Christophe Barret, global oil analyst at Calyon, commenting on the gains in oil prices. Weakness in the dollar typically boosts commodities denominated in the U.S. currency, such as crude oil and gold. In economic news, private-sector firms in the U.S. cut 203,000 jobs in October, according to the ADP employment report released Wednesday. It was the fewest jobs lost since July 2008. See full story. Business conditions improved in October across a narrower group of companies in the U.S. nonmanufacturing sectors, according to the Institute for Supply Management index released Wednesday. The ISM nonmanufacturing index fell to 50.6% from 50.9% in September. Readings above 50% indicate more firms said business is improving than said it's worsening. It's the second straight month above 50% after 11 months of contraction. Meanwhile, investors will be watching to see whether the Federal Open Market Committee gives any signals about a potential withdrawal of some of the extraordinary measures taken by the U.S. central bank to help the economy recover from the financial crisis. Late Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute reported that crude inventories declined by 3.27 million barrels during the week ended Oct. 30. Gasoline stocks rose by 500,000 barrels and distillate inventories increased by 1.79 million barrels, the API also said. The Energy Information Administration will release its more closely watched inventories report at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. The government and the API use different criteria for measuring week-to-week changes in U.S. energy stockpiles. Analysts surveyed by Platts expect an increase of 1.3 million barrels in crude inventories for the latest week, along with a rise of 800,000 barrels for gasoline supplies as well as a decline of 1 million barrels for distillates such as heating oil. "The API data don't look very bullish -- you have a drop in crude stocks for last week, but you have gasoline and distillates stocks increasing," Barret said. "It looks like very weak demand. Oil fundamentals remain very weak." In foreign-exchange dealings, the dollar edged lower against most other major currencies. The dollar index (DXY 75.88, -0.51, -0.66%) , which measures the performance of the greenback against a basket of other currencies, lately fell 0.3%. See Currencies. Also in energy trading, December gasoline futures rose 0.5% to $2.01 a gallon, and December heating oil added 0.1% to $2.0754 a gallon.

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