U.S. crude oil holds steady above $74 per barrel after selling off

U.S. crude oil futures held steady above $74 per barrel Tuesday, after selling off in the previous session amid demand worries in Asia and cease-fire talks in the Middle East.

“We are seeing oil prices mean reverting on the back of frankly a lot more supply but also softer demand,” Francisco Blanch, commodity strategist at Bank of America, told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Monday.

“Oil is really trading on supply and demand fundamentals and we have a bit of an air pocket right now with China slowing down here,” Blanch said.

U.S. crude oil prices have fallen 8.7% so far this quarter, while Brent is down 9.8%.

Here are Tuesday’s energy prices:

• West Texas Intermediate September contract: $74.42 per barrel, up 5 cents, or 0.07%. Year to date, U.S. crude oil is up 3.87%.
• Brent October contract: $77.74 per barrel, up 8 cents, or 0.12%. Year to date, the global benchmark is ahead 0.92%.
• RBOB Gasoline September contract: $2.26 per gallon, little changed. Year to date, gasoline is up 7.67%.
• Natural Gas September contract: $2.25 per thousand cubic feet, up more than 1 cent, or 0.85%. Year to date, gas is down 10.2%.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the Middle East, where he is making a renewed push to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza and return hostages held by Hamas. Blinken said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a bridging proposal and called on Hamas to do the same.

But Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar views the latest round of cease-fire talks as a bluff to give Israel additional time to wage war in Gaza, Arab mediators told The Wall Street Journal. He hopes to pressure Israel by launching attacks from the West Bank, the mediators told the Journal.

Hamas claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that injured a bystander Sunday.

Oil prices have pulled back as Iran has refrained so far from attacking Israel in response to the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran in late July. The U.S. hopes a cease-fire deal in Gaza can prevent a wider war in the region.

“The market is really to some extent wrongly assuming that this geopolitical risk is gone,” Amena Bakr, senior research at Energy Intel, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Tuesday.