Oil Futures Little Changed in Asian Trade

Oil futures were little changed in Asian trade on Tuesday, following a pullback overnight that reduced Monday's gains to about 1%.

--November Nymex light, sweet crude oil on the New York Mercantile exchange was recently down 8 cents at $51.79 a barrel in the Globex trading session. December Brent was unchanged at $57.82 a barrel.

--Investors are likely to focus on tensions in the Middle East amid clashes between the Iraqi central government and the Kurdish semiautonomous region, in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. Baghdad could face some challenges in bringing barrels from disputed fields to the market if the situation worsens, says an RBC Capital Markets report.

--Meanwhile, an S&P Global Platts report expects U.S. weekly crude oil inventories to show a 3.9-million-barrel decline. There is no sign that anything on the production front is about to change in the near-term, though, despite ongoing efforts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries aimed at reining in oversupplied markets.

Write to Biman Mukherji at biman.mukherji@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 17, 2017 00:33 ET (04:33 GMT)