Oil..

Oil jumps back above $58 a barrelNEW YORK (AP) - Oil prices jumped back above $58 a barrel Tuesday, as the International Energy Agency forecast a strong increase in global demand this year and a snowstorm plowed through the Midwest.The IEA boosted its 2007 global oil demand forecast by 273,000 barrels per day to 86 million barrels per day on higher expectations for demand from China. The agency forecast 2006 global oil demand of 84.5 million barrels per day.Also pushing up demand prospects was a winter storm cruising through the U.S. Midwest and headed for the Northeast, which consumes 80 percent of the nation's heating oil."Primarily, people are just looking at the weather right now," said Daniel Flynn, an energy trader at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago, just before asking a co-worker how much snow was outside their office.Flynn said he'll be watching to see if oil prices can break through the $59 per barrel barrier.Light, sweet crude for March delivery rose 80 cents to $58.61 per barrel in midday trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices climbed as high as $58.85 per barrel earlier in the session.Brent crude at London's ICE Futures exchange rose 38 cents to $56.98 a barrel.The rebound follows a sharp drop of more than $2 a day earlier, spurred by moderating U.S. temperatures and expectations that there will be a crude surplus in the spring.Rebounds, though, have been difficult to sustain recently due to concerns on the part of so-called "longs," or investors hoping for higher prices, Cameron Hanover's Peter Beutel wrote in a research note."The longs cannot get out of their own way, and each attempt to move higher has been halted by heavy, long liquidation rather than by fresh selling," Beutel wrote. "If the jittery longs can be coaxed out by lower prices and, if that also brings in short-term short sellers, it could put the market in a better position to break above $60."Traders said they were also looking ahead to Wednesday's report on U.S. inventories.According to a Dow Jones Newswires survey, U.S. stocks of heating oil and other distillate fuels are expected to fall by about 4 million to 5 million barrels below the 136.3 million barrels reported last week.Gasoline and crude stocks are both expected to rise in the data released by the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration.The U.S. winter chill of the past couple weeks, which drove prices briefly above $60 on Friday, is expected to ease up by late February, leading traders to believe that heating fuel demand will weaken.Natural gas prices rose 9.8 cents to $7.324 per 1,000 cubic feet on the Nymex and heating oil rose 2.5 cents to $1.67 a gallon. Gasoline prices rose 4.05 cents to $1.5932 per gallon.