Crude Oil Slides Below $106 Ahead Of Inventories

(RTTNews) - Crude oil prices are lower Tuesday morning with investors looking ahead to inventories data and the start of a two-day Federal Reserve policy meeting.

The American Petroleum Institute's report on inventories for the week ended June 13 will be out later in the day.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration will release the official crude inventory data.

Investors are also keeping an eye on developments in Iraq.

Crude oil futures for August are down $0.64 or 0.6 percent at $105.67 a barrel, after rising to $106.27 a barrel earlier.

On Monday, crude oil futures ended a tad lower at $106.90 a barrel, after scaling a high of $107.54 a barrel intraday.

Although fears of supply disruption from Iraq remained, oil retreated from higher levels on reports that the U.S. could collaborate with Iran to help the Iraqi government bring the country under control.

Investors also weighed some upbeat economic data from the U.S. with both industrial production and homebuilder confidence rising more than expected.

Meanwhile, natural gas for July is up marginally at $4.713 per million btu.

On the economic front, the 2-day FOMC meeting gets underway, although the outcome is not expected until tomorrow.

The Labor Department is scheduled to release its consumer price inflation report for May at 8:30 am ET. The consensus estimates call for a 0.2 percent increase each for consumer prices and core consumer prices.

Around the same time, the Commerce Department will release its housing starts report for May. Economists expect housing starts to come in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.036 million units, while building permits are expected at 1.062 million units.