Oil prices edged higher on Wednesday amid continued outages in the United States and a weaker dollar, but a surprise build in U.S. inventories last week capped gains.
Brent crude futures gained 52 cents, or 0.8, to 65.89 a barrel at 1109 GMT, after hitting a session low of 64.80.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate WTI crude futures were up 37 cents, or 0.6, at 62.04 a barrel, after trading as low as 60.97 earlier on Wednesday.
Crude stockpiles rose by 1 million barrels in the week to Feb. 19, the American Petroleum Institute API reported on Tuesday, against estimates for a draw of 5.2 million barrels in a Reuters poll.
The data, however, showed a largerthanexpected 4.5 million barrel fall in distillate fuels.
Official data is due later on Wednesday.
This morning, we have seen the oil complex oscillate in between gains and losses, but it has recently firmed on the back of a weaker U.S. dollar, StoneX analyst Kevin Solomon said.
The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies was trading near a 6week low on Wednesday.
As crude is priced in dollars, a weaker greenback makes buying the commodity cheaper for holders of other currencies.
Brent may rise into a range of 66.4566.97 per barrel again, as suggested by its wave pattern and a projection analysis, said Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.
Traffic at the Houston ship channel was slowly coming back to normal but terminals were still facing several issues due to last weeks freezing weather in Texas.
The price…