Crude Oil Prices Edge Higher

Light, sweet crude oil futures rallied slightly Tuesday, but Brent contracts continued dropping and the rest of the energy complex was having a mixed session.

As the day wound down at the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas crude was up 95 cents at $88.76 a barrel. Brent, however, was dropping $7.15 to $83.10.

Heating oil was up 1 cent at $2.48 a gallon, while reformulated gasoline was off 3 cents to $2.02 a gallon. Natural gas was losing 4 cents at $6.80 per million British thermal units.

Turning to stocks,

Exxon Mobil

(XOM) - Get Report

was up 2.5%, and

Chevron

(CVX) - Get Report

was slipping 0.4%.

ConocoPhillips

(COP) - Get Report

edged down 0.2%.

Refiners

Tesoro

(TSO)

and

Valero

(VLO) - Get Report

gave back 5% and 2%, respectively. The

U.S. Oil

(USO) - Get Report

ETF, which tracks crude prices, ticked up 0.5%.

Elsewhere in commodities, gold was up $1 to $883 an ounce, and silver was adding 4 cents to $11.42 an ounce.

This article was written by a staff member of TheStreet.com.