Peter Nurse   

Investing.com — On Tuesday, oil prices edged higher as traders wait for the U.S. inventories numbers to see if there is a possible move from the Biden administration against rising gasoline prices.

At 9:25 am ET (1425 GMT), the futures were 0.6% higher at $82.39/barrel, having gained 0.8% on Monday. Futures rose 0.3%, to $83.69 after rising 0.8% in the previous session. 

U.S. The price of gasoline RBOB Futures was up 1.2% to $2.3495 per gallon.

Crude prices have been in a flurry this year. The Nymex contract climbed seven years to a record high and the Brent contract rose to a three year peak. These two events were due to the recovery of the global economy and the restraint of supply by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, an alliance known as OPEC+.

OPEC+, which agreed to increase the supply of oil by just 400,000 barrels per hour, rebuffed U.S. requests to do more.

This prompted U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to say on Monday that U.S. President Joe Biden may take measures as early as this week to address the country’s high gasoline prices, a political hot potato.

“The most obvious tool for the U.S. administration to use is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” said analysts at ING, in a note. “Outside of mandated and SPR modernization sales (and a test sale in 2014), the last sale was part of a coordinated IEA release back in June 2011, which saw 30.6MMbbls released.”

Later Tuesday, the industry-funded will release its weekly estimate for U.S. crude oil stocks and product inventories. Markets expect another increase in crude inventories. However, gasoline supplies which are already at their lowest levels in four years will show a fifth weekly draw.

A weekly oil status report from the U.S Energy Information Administration is also due at a later time in the session.