By Claire Rangel Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Crude futures rose Wednesday, briefly topping $80 a barrel, on a weaker dollar while awaiting the release of key U.S. inventory data. Light, sweet crude for December delivery recently traded 28 cents, or 0.3%, higher at $79.42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil briefly pierced through $80 a barrel to touch an intraday peak of $80.23 a barrel, the highest level since Nov. 10. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange traded 25 cents, or 0.3%, higher at $79.22 a barrel. Oil prices took their influence from the dollar weakening against the euro. This, after oil largely ignored the dollar's direction Tuesday focusing instead on fundamentals that pushed heating oil prices higher. Oil tends to rise as a weaker dollar makes the commodity cheaper to other currency holders. But oil prices retreated from the earlier highs after a setback in the U.S. housing market that saw the dollar erase some of its earlier losses. The Commerce Department reported Housing Starts in October fell 10.6%, significantly lower than the 1.7% increase anticipated by economists. Meanwhile, the Labor department said the U.S. consumer price index rose 0.3% in October, marginally higher than economists' projections. The oil market, though, is still digesting the hefty crude stock draw of 4.4 million barrels reported late Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group. This is seen as a precursor to what the weekly figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, may show Wednesday morning. "The dollar is down and the API draw last night was enough to get the get the market bullish," said Pete Donovan, of Vantage Trading in New York. Analysts expect Wednesday's weekly figures to reflect a crude draw due after Tropical Storm Ida traversed the Gulf of Mexico last week. This shuttered U.S. crude production and halted the offlading of tankers at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, a vital center for crude imports. Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires project a 600,000 barrel draw in crude stocks, a 100,000 barrel increase in gasoline inventories and a 500,000 barrel decline in distillate stocks, that includes diesel and heating oil. Refiners are expected to lower refinery processing rates by 0.1% to 79.8%. "It will be no surprise to see the market rally if the stock numbers show substantial draws," said Donovan. Traders will also be keenly eyeing the demand figures from the report, to guage whether oil consumption is finally recovvering in the U.S. alongside fledgling economic growth. If another sharp stock draw is reported and demand does pick up, this could offer the incentive for the market to target $82 a barrel, the high of this year scored on Oct. 21. Front-month December reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB, recently traded 1.43 cents, or 0.7%, higher at $2.0192 a gallon. December heating oil recently traded 40 points, or 0.3%, higher at $2.0625 a gallon. -By Claire Rangel, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2846; claire.rangel@dowjones.com.

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