Crude oil for October delivery was last up 4 cents to $74.41 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex. Oil prices posted modest gains on Monday. Over three months, oil futures have climbed nearly 20%."Yesterday's price gains in crude although marginal in absolute terms could be interpreted as rather impressive given the strengthening in the U.S. dollar and a drop in the equity markets," said analysts at ODL Securities in London. "Robust sentiment on global economic recovery still provides strong support for the energy complex especially after both Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet talked about signs indicating the world economy has bottomed," they said. U.S. consumer-confidence data and reaction to the reappointment of Bernanke as Fed chairman may drive oil prices on Tuesday, strategists said. President Barack Obama nominated Bernanke Tuesday to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. In a short statement in Martha's Vineyard, with Bernanke standing at his side, Obama said Bernanke's background, temperament, courage and creativity helped to prevent another Great Depression. In economic news, the prices of single-family homes in 20 major cities rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% in June and were down 15.4% in the past year, according to the Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's.Traders are also awaiting data on consumer confidence. "If today's release of U.S. consumer confidence data comes in above expectations as our economists expect, we should see further price gains," said Credit Suisse analysts. Also on Globex, September reformulated gasoline fell 0.2% to $2.0460 a gallon and September heating oil dropped 0.3% to $1.9173 a gallon. September natural-gas futures fell 7 cents, or 2.5%, to $2.851 per million British thermal units. Also on energy traders' radar screens, the American Petroleum Institute will report data on petroleum inventories on Tuesday afternoon. The Energy Information Administration will release a separate and more closely watched report on inventories on Wednesday morning. Analysts surveyed by Platts expect a drop of 2.7 million barrels in crude inventories for the week ended Aug. 21. They also project decreases of 1.5 million barrels for gasoline inventories and 700,000 barrels for distillate stockpiles. Polya Lesova is a New York-based reporter for MarketWatch.

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