SINGAPORE: Oil prices eased in Asian trade Wednesday as investors locked in profits after recent sharp gains while keeping a close eye on international tensions over Russia's absorption of Ukraine's Crimea region.
New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for April delivery, was down 25 cents to $99.45 in afternoon trade, and Brent North Sea crude dropped two cents to $106.77 for its May contract.
WTI had jumped $1.62, or 1.7 percent, in US closing trade Tuesday on news of a pipeline expansion that will help to draw down bulging crude supplies at the country's Cushing depot in Oklahoma.
Desmond Chua, market strategist at CMC Markets in Singapore, said "we are still due for more rising tensions in terms of follow-up actions from Russia" in its showdown with the West over Crimea.
More than 70 percent of Russia's oil and gas exports to Europe pass through Ukraine, and there are concerns that Western sanctions on Moscow could lead to a disruption of supplies.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a treaty claiming Crimea as Russian territory, as Ukraine warned the showdown had entered a "military stage" after soldiers were killed on both sides.
The treaty signing was conducted at lightning speed in the Kremlin in a defiant expansion of Russia's post-Soviet borders that has plunged relations with the West to a post-Cold War low.
The move, less than three weeks after pro-Moscow troops first seized control of the peninsula, triggered furious condemnation from Western leaders.
Investors are also watching the outcome of the US Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting that ends later Wednesday.
The US central bank is expected further to cut its massive stimulus program amid a slowly recovering economy in the world's largest crude-oil consuming nation.
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