By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com — Crude prices rose on Tuesday. This was in addition to gains made during the previous session. Traders awaited U.S. crude oil inventory data that would help them decide which direction they should take, given the market’s seasonal weakness.

After rising 2.4% on Monday, oil prices rose 41 cents to $75.98 per barrel. This was mainly due to optimism regarding travel in 2022.

The London-traded Brent, the international benchmark for oil, ended the session with a gain of 34 cents or 0.4% at $78.94. Brent gained 3.2% Monday.

“Markets are  stronger … with the continuation chart for Crude now at the 200d MA,” Scott Shelton, ICAP’s energy futures broker in  Durham, North Carolina, said, referring to WTI’s 200-day moving average.

“Indications are that CTAs have been buying for most of yesterday and today as they are flipping from short to long,” Shelton added. 

CTAs (or Commodity Trading Advisors) are a term that is commonly used to describe hedge funds. They have been experiencing volatile returns as oil prices try to stabilize after dropping from 7-year highs in October to 4 months ago.  

WTI has been up 57% over the past year despite the Omicron volatility, Brent is showing an increase of 52% annually.

Tuesday’s gains in oil came ahead of a snapshot of a weekly snapshot on U.S. crude, gasoline and distillate stockpiles due from the American Petroleum Institute.

Each Tuesday, the API numbers are released after market settlement at 4:30PM ET (21:30 GMT). These data serve as a prelude to weekly official inventory data that is due every Wednesday from EIA (or U.S. Energy Information Administration). This week’s release will be the last for the year, although the final reading for 2021 itself — for the week ended Dec 31 — will be published next week.

Analysts tracked by Investing.com have forecast that U.S. fell by 3.2 million barrels for the week ended Dec. 24, adding to the previous week’s decline of 4.7 million.  

According to forecasts, inventories could have risen by 31,000 barrels against the increase of 5.55 million the week prior.

Stockpiles of , which include diesel and , are expected to have grown by 59,000 barrels, after the previous week’s gain of 396,000.