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Brent crude futures for June rose 16 cents, or 0.18%, to $89.08
per barrel at 0902 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude
futures for May gained 11 cents, or 0.13%, to $85.26 a barrel.
Both Brent and WTI climbed 1.7% during the previous session to
their highest since October.
"The rise in hostilities in both hotspots pushed the price of
the two crude oil futures contracts to their highest levels this
year," PVM analyst Tamas Varga said of Tuesday's rise.
Prices jumped higher on Tuesday after a fresh round of Ukrainian
drone attacks on Russian refineries threatened to take even more
of the country's processing capacity offline.
Investors were also concerned that conflict in the Middle East
could spread, after Iran vowed revenge against Israel for an
attack on Monday that killed high-ranking military personnel.
A wider conflict in the Middle East involving more oil-producing
nations could cause supply disruptions. Iran, which provides
support for the Hamas militia fighting Israel in Gaza, is the
third-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Adding to the supply worries, Mexico's state energy company
Pemex requested its trading unit to cancel up to 436,000 barrels
per day of crude exports this month as it gets ready to process
domestic oil at the new Dos Bocas refinery, an internal document
reviewed by Reuters showed.
On Wednesday, Taiwan's strongest earthquake in at least 25 years
briefly caused Formosa Petrochemical to halt operations at its
Mailiao refinery as a precautionary measure, but works have
since restarted.
Investors will be looking ahead to an OPEC+ ministerial panel at
1100 GMT, which is unlikely to recommend any oil output policy
changes according to three sources, having already decided to
extend current cuts until June.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will also
release oil inventory data later on Wednesday. Data from the
American Petroleum Institute reported crude inventories fell by
2.3 million barrels last week, traders said on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Robert Harvey in London, Arathy Somasekhar in
Houston and Jeslyn Lerh in Singapore; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
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