Brent crude, the worldwide benchmark for oil, was down 8 cents from its previous close at $55.90 per barrel (bbl) at 7:25 a.m. CT (12:25 GMT).
"We're getting close to the the end of seasonal crude builds, may already have ended, but its already been factored in the price".
North Korean state media warned on Tuesday of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression as a U.S. Navy strike group steamed toward the western Pacific.
Crude oil edged back from a five-week high on April 11, as rising US shale oil production weighed against support from tensions in the Middle East and production cuts in OPEC and other states.
"People have been picking up on the bullish indicators in the market ahead of the seasonal draw in crude stocks", said David Wech, an analyst at JBC Energy GmbH in Vienna.
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) gave up 15 cents, or 0.3 per cent, to US$52.93 a barrel, after having touched a five-week high of US$53.23 a barrel.
Summer driving season will also give prices a "boost", and demand won't fall anytime soon, according to Croft. Crude prices continued to trade with upside bias, after last week's US missile strike on an airbase in Syria, underpinned a rally in oil prices, as investors anxious about potential supply disruptions in the region. While total supplies may have started to fall last week, stockpiles at Cushing in Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI and the biggest U.S. oil-storage hub, probably rose by 800,000 barrels, according to a forecast compiled by Bloomberg.
Churches in southern Egypt will not celebrate Easter following bombings
Before making the announcement, he had called a National Defence Council meet. Egypts Christian minority has often been targeted by Islamist militants.
The gain in oil prices comes despite rising US shale oil production.
Libya's Sharara oilfield was shut on Sunday after a group blocked a pipeline linking it to an oil terminal, a Libyan oil source said.
Meanwhile, Kuwait oil chief, Essam al-Marzouq, fuelled expectations that OPEC would reveal further cuts in March compared to previous months, after he said he expected producers' level of compliance with the deal to cut global supply would "be higher than the previous couple of months".
WTI crude settled above $53 Monday, its highest settlement since March 7, according to data from Dow Jones.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is scheduled to release its USA oil inventory projections for the week ended April 7 later on Tuesday which are likely to provide an indication of what the official figures from the Energy Information Administration will show a day later.
In November past year, OPEC and other producers, including Russian Federation agreed to cut output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd).
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