Oil held steady around $73 a barrel after briefly marking a new 10-month high today as dealers waited for weekly US oil inventory data that is expected to show little change in crude or fuel stocks.
London Brent crude eased 6 cents to $72.99 a barrel earlier this morning, after having traded as high as $73.32, the highest front-month price since late August.
US crude shed five cents to $71.36, with activity still thin following the Independence Day holiday.
Oil prices have risen to a series of 10-month highs over the past week as traders fret over thin US gasoline supplies and fear a rapid drawdown in lofty crude stocks if Opec maintains its supply curbs through the peak summer demand season.
Weekly inventory data due out later is unlikely to do much to change the medium-term outlook, according to a Reuters poll of analysts that shows an expected 100,000 barrels rise in distillate stocks and a 300,000 barrels increase in gasoline.
Crude stocks were expected to have fallen by 300,000 barrels from a nine-year high, but analysts may be more focused on refinery utilisation rates, which were expected to have risen by 0.9 percentage points from exceptionally low levels.
Opec officials maintain that current high prices are the fault of insufficient refining capacity, not a lack of crude oil supplies, despite calls by consumer nations to lift supply now to avoid a squeeze ahead of the winter.