Brent oil futures briefly slipped below $109 on Thursday, pressured by warmer weather in the United States and worries about escalating turmoil in Ukraine, though supply-disruption concerns kept losses in check.
Armed men seized the regional government headquarters and parliament on Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and raised the Russian flag in a challenge to the country’s new rulers.
Tensions kept the dollar at two-week highs, weighing on dollar-denominated commodities such as oil.
Brent crude was down 45 cents at $109.07 a barrel by 0929 GMT, recovering slightly from an intraday low of $108.85. It settled almost unchanged overnight.
US oil fell 15 cents to $102.44 a barrel, after ending 76 cents higher.
“When you get markets in their current state of flux you’ve got a general risk-off sort of bias to proceedings, so you’ve got a slight negative bias towards Brent,” said Michael Hewson, senior analyst at CMC Markets.