LONDON — Oil prices rose slightly on Wednesday after sharp gains a day earlier caused by weakness of the dollar and renewed tensions between crude-producing Iran and the West.
New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, was up 31 cents at 77.32 dollars a barrel around 1200 GMT.
Brent North Sea crude for April delivery climbed 32 cents to 76 dollars a barrel.
Crude futures rocketed more than three dollars on Tuesday as the euro recouped some of its recent losses against the dollar after European Union finance ministers put pressure on Greece to tackle its massive debt problems.
A weaker greenback makes dollar-priced crude cheaper for buyers using stronger currencies, boosting demand.
The crude market had also rallied over oil-rich Iran's nuclear drive, traders said.
"Oil prices benefited from improving sentiment on the broader market, a pull back in the dollar rate and renewed geopolitical concerns," VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov said on Wednesday.
Iran recently began enriching uranium to 20 percent purity, which Washington and other capitals said added to evidence that the Islamic Republic is seeking to build a nuclear weapon.
Tehran denies the charge, insisting its goal is peaceful nuclear energy and research.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday looking to rally support for tough new UN sanctions against Iran, which she warned is turning into a "military dictatorship" bent on building a nuclear weapon.
Responding on Wednesday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Clinton had spread "lies".
Foreign exchange activity and Iran remained the focus in the absence of key US inventory data.
The weekly figures, usually published by the US government on Wednesdays, has been delayed by one day owing to a public holiday in the United States at the start of this week.
Oil prices were meanwhile pummeled recently owing to a falling euro and China's latest bid to cool down its booming economy, traders said.
China is the world's second-biggest oil-consuming nation, after the United States.
In foreign exchange trade, the dollar advanced slightly against the euro on Wednesday after a pull-back caused by reduced fears about the fallout from Greece's mountain of state debt.
Last week, the euro slid to a nine-month low point of 1.3532 dollars, hit by worries that other eurozone countries such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain could suffer similar fiscal problems as Greece.
But it rose sharply on Tuesday in US trade after a meeting of European Union finance ministers called on Greece to prepare drastic action by March 16 to rein in its bulging public deficit -- the highest in the 16-member eurozone.
Radical new cost-cutting and tax-raising measures are set to be imposed under newly agreed European Union voting rules.
