On the New York Mercantile Exchange light, sweet crude futures for delivery in June traded at $100.37 a barrel at 0517 GMT, up $0.11 in the Globex electronic session. June Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.01 to $108.05 a barrel. Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine on Thursday ignored Russian President ‘s call to postpone a referendum on secession scheduled for Sunday. Ukraine’s government also rejected Moscow’s demands to end its military offensive against separatists–setting the stage for further unrest. Despite the retreat in Brent prices from more than $110 there should be strong support for it in the recent trading range in the near term and the Ukraine crisis should help blunt any downward momentum, Eurasia Group director of global oil Greg Priddy said in a report. “The pace of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s tapering of asset purchases will be a major variable affecting oil market […]