Oil Futures Edge Up As Greece Deal Lifts Mooda

Crude-oil futures rose in Asian trading Tuesday as an agreement in Europe to release the next bailout-fund payment to Greece eased uncertainty over the closely watched issue and sparked purchases of risk assets.

Benchmark U.S. crude for delivery in January  climbed 24 cents, or 0.3%, to $87.98 a barrel, recovering some of the 54-cent loss suffered in the regular Monday session on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The gains came as the agreement over Greece aided an improvement in investor sentiment, helping weaken the U.S. dollar, lift most Asian stock markets and push U.S. equity-index futures higher.

Euro-zone finance ministers, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund reached an agreement in Brussels to disburse 43.7 billion euros ($56.8 billion), reaching an agreement on the terms of the bailout after two earlier rounds of negotiations failed to result in a consensus.

The ICE dollar index , a measure of the greenback’s performance against a basket of six other major currencies, slipped to 80.144 from 80.227 late Monday in North America.

Following the Greek deal, Dow Jones Industrial Average  futures had risen 23 points, or 0.2%, to 12,959 by early afternoon in Hong Kong.

Elsewhere in the energy complex, January futures for gasoline  and heating-oil inched up 0.1% to $2.71 a gallon, and 0.2% to $3.07 a gallon, respectively.

Natural-gas futures for delivery in December  added 0.5% to $3.75 per million British thermal units.

Marketwatch