Brent was up 7 cents, or 0.1%, at $ 65.31 a barrel at 1505 GMT, still near its highest levels since January 2020. US crude fell 14 cents, or 0.2 %, at $ 61.56 per barrel.
Both contracts rose more than a dollar earlier before pulling back.
“Vaccine news is helping oil, as the likely removal of mobility restrictions in the coming months through vaccine deployments is expected to further stimulate demand for oil and the price recovery,” said Giovanni Staunovo, petroleum analyst at UBS.
But, tempering the optimistic mood, US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the US economic recovery remained “patchy and far from complete” and that it would take “some time” before the bank Central plans to change the policies it had adopted. help the country regain full employment.
Commerzbank analyst Eugen Weinberg said the recent rise in oil prices was supported by bullish price forecasts from US brokers.
Goldman Sachs expects Brent prices to hit $ 70 a barrel in the second quarter from previously forecasted $ 60 and $ 75 in the third quarter from $ 65 forecast earlier.
Morgan Stanley, who expects Brent to hit $ 70 in the third quarter, said new cases of COVID-19 were declining as “mobility statistics bottomed out and started to improve.”
Bank of America said Brent prices could temporarily hit $ 70 a barrel in the second quarter.
In the United States, traffic on the Houston Shipping Channel has slowly returned to normal after the winter storm last week, although production is not expected to fully restart anytime soon.
Some US shale producers expect lower oil production in the first quarter.
Inventories of U.S. crude oil and refined products likely fell last week, according to a preliminary Reuters poll on Monday, due to the disruption in Texas.
