By Barani Krishnan

Investor.com — Crude oil prices rose by 3% Tuesday after a three day slide below the $100 level. This triggered short-covering.

Imminent data on U.S. oil inventories, expected from both industry group API and government agency EIA, also led to buying on dips by market participants since Monday’s settlement.

Crude, the London-traded benchmark oil price, rose 2.8% to $105.02 per barrel at 2:18PM ET (18:18 GMT) 

Brent lost 4% in the previous session, extending last week’s 4.5% slide. As China, the top oil buyer, struggled with an unexpected Covid surge, Brent fell to $99.26 on Monday. Meanwhile the Federal Reserve was determined to increase U.S. interest rates by doubling down. 

, or WTI, the New York-traded benchmark for U.S. crude, was up $3.60, or 3.7%, at $102.14 in Tuesday’s trade. 

WTI fell 3.4% on Monday and touched an intraday low of $95.31, following a slide of 4.5% last week. 

“The $95 low on WTI has been a tough nut to crack and since we went there yesterday, without really going below it, it triggered a wave of short-covering,” said John Kilduff, founding partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital.

Participants in the market were looking for U.S. weekly crude oil inventory data after settlements from API or the American Petroleum Institute.

At approximately 4:30PM ET (20:30 GMT), the API will publish a snapshot showing U.S. crude oil, gasoline, and distillates closing balances for week ending April 22, 2018. This data will serve as a prelude to the release of official inventory data from the U.S Energy Information Administration Wednesday.

Investing.com’s analysts expect EIA to report a 2.0 million barrel build for last week. That is compared to the 8.02-million-barrel reduction that was reported in the week up to April 15.

Surprisingly, consensus calls for a draw with 761,000 barrels compared to the decline of 976,000 barrels in the prior week.

With , the expectation is for a drop of 2.66 million barrels versus the prior week’s slide of 829,000.