Oil futures retreated slightly Tuesday but held near three-week highs on expectations that strong demand from U.S. refineries would continue to shrink domestic oil supplies. Light, sweet crude for August delivery settled down 17 cents, or 0.2%, at $104.42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The August contract expired at settlement Tuesday. The more-actively traded September contract settled down 47 cents, or 0.5%, at $102.39 a barrel. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange fell 35 cents, or 0.3%, to $107.33 a barrel. U.S. crude-oil supplies have fallen for three straight weeks as refineries have run at unusually high rates. U.S. refineries used 16.6 million barrels of oil a day in the week ended July 11, a record high in U.S. Energy Information Administration data going back to August 1982. The EIA is due to release its data for the week ended July 18 on Wednesday. Analysts […]