AKIPRESS.COM - Oil prices rose in Asian trade Tuesday as the breakdown in Greece's debt negotiations failed to affect bullish sentiment in oil markets, with Brent crude now topping $62 a barrel, according to Nasdaq.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in March traded at $53.16 a barrel at 0536 GMT, up $0.38 in the Globex electronic session. U.S. markets were closed on Monday for a holiday and there was no settlement for Nymex WTI crude.

Brent crude for April delivery rose $0.65 to $62.05 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange. Brent had lost 12 cents a barrel overnight, settling at its second-highest price level this year.

Talks among eurozone finance ministers over a new financing agreement for Greece broke down abruptly Monday, increasing the uncertainty about the country's future inside the currency bloc and weakening the euro.

Any major currency movement that boosts the U.S. dollar tends to sour oil-market sentiment and weigh on demand and prices as oil is a dollar-denominated commodity. But oil has so far stuck to its latest rally with Brent up by over 30% since its January low.

Investors also weighed reports of violence in Ukraine and the Middle East. In Ukraine, continued violence around a contested eastern city and sporadic fighting in other regions threatened a cease-fire brokered over the weekend by France and Germany.

Meanwhile, Egypt entered the broadening conflict with the Islamic State as its warplanes bombed extremist targets in Libya on Monday in retaliation for the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians.

Nymex crude is likely to trade with a bullish bias in the near term after hitting a five-session high of $53.69 a barrel Tuesday morning, Dow Jones technical analysis showed. Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for March--the benchmark gasoline contract--rose 52 points to $1.6314 a gallon, while March diesel traded at $1.9899, 185 points higher.

ICE gasoil for March changed hands at $586.25 a metric ton, up $0.50 from Monday's settlement.