Oil edged down on Tuesday to just below $90 a barrel, following news that some ships had passed through into the Houston area in the United States after a dense sea fog that halted crude imports, lifted briefly. US light crude for March delivery fell 30 cents to $89.72 a barrel by 0623 GMT, partially erasing Monday's $1.06 gains, which saw oil closing at $90.02 a barrel.
London Brent crude fell 15 cents to $90.32. "The passing through of some ships would have triggered some selling," said Mark Pervan, a senior resource analyst at the Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) Bank. "The market is also looking at the lower refinery run rates and thinking that crude demand is going to fall because the US has passed the peak winter demand."
Fog that halted ships serving big oil refineries in parts of Texas and Louisiana on Sunday lifted for a few hours, letting some ships move in, but the channels were closed again on Monday, officials said. Eight ships, include five tankers, made it into the Houston area, the biggest US petrochemical complex, before pilots closed the waterway again due to the lack of visibility.
Fog is an intermittent problem in winter along the Gulf Coast, a major US refining centre that accounts for 13.5 percent of the country's refining capacity. Disruptions to imports have in the past either led to sharp drawdowns in commercial crude stock levels or forced refiners to cut production. Expectations that US crude inventories will likely rise for the fourth consecutive week were also putting pressure on prices, analysts said.
Data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) is expected to show a 2.2 million-barrel build in crude stocks, a 2.1 million-barrel decline in distillates and a 1.9 million-barrel increase in gasoline inventories.
Refinery runs were forecast to have fallen 0.2 percentage points to 84.8 percent of capacity, the poll showed. Senior Opec officials on Monday downplayed talk of any change in oil output during its next meeting on March 5, saying a decision would hinge on the health of the global economy.
On Friday, the oil cartel, at a meeting in Vienna, agreed to leave its output unchanged for now, but Gulf producer Kuwait said a supply rise would be discussed, while Iran and Venezuela suggested a cut might be in order.
Analysts said fears of a US recession would continue to cast a pall over oil prices, but fog problems in the United States and geopolitics in the Middle East would provide short-term support.