Investing.com - Crude oil prices reversed earlier gains on Tuesday, as gloomy Chinese data dragged on sentiment in a market already weighed down by persistently high production levels.
Oil futures initially rose, tracking Asian stocks, but were later pulled down as data showed China's national rail freight volumes logging their biggest ever annual decline in 2015, raising questions about how sharply the world's number two economy was slowing and what this meant for oil demand.
U.S. crude futures were at $36.72 a barrel by 11.37 GMT, while internationally traded Brent futures were down 0.54% to $37.02.
On the supply side sentiment continued to be dominated by producers' unwillingness to cut output and that has led to a surplus of hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude every day as well as a price drop by two-thirds since mid-2014.