Light, sweet crude for May delivery fell 66 cents to $63.62 a barrel in early electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for May rose 64 cents to $68.51 a barrel in electronic trading on London's ICE Futures Exchange.
In other Nymex trading, natural gas rose 6.5 cents to $7.672 per 1,000 cubic feet, and heating oil futures were down 0.93 cents at $1.8702 a gallon.
Oil prices rose more than $5 a barrel — hitting six-month highs — after the March 23 detention of the 15 British sailors and marines. The market immediately fell following their release Thursday, but trading was stopped from Friday for the long Easter weekend.
Markets today digested news from Iran that it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, a dramatic expansion of a nuclear program that has drawn U.N. sanctions and condemnation from the West.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony today at an enrichment facility at Natanz that Iran was now capable of enriching nuclear fuel "on an industrial scale."
In the U.S., refineries in Texas are scrambling to keep up with record demand as production problems persist, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago.
Gas prices could remain higher even after the refineries come back online, as the usual slack in demand between the winter heating season and summer driving months has yet to materialize, he said.
"Historically, we've never had this kind of demand," Flynn said. "We really don't know how much it's going to fall. The refineries will be playing catch-up all summer."
The refinery problems have prompted traders in the physical market to look overseas — which, combined with increased demand in Europe, has driven the price of oil traded in London up over $68 a barrel, higher than in New York.
Last week's annual report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed a larger-than-expected increase in gasoline supplies but lower refinery output. Many refineries have suffered unplanned outages in recent weeks, which has weakened demand for crude and reduced gasoline production.
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