Oil prices sagged nearly all day Tuesday, then zipped higher toward the end of the trading session. The late-day buying spree was a technical rally, brokers said, as traders who had expected prices to fall even further rushed in to cover losing bets.

After falling as low as $57.05 a barrel, light sweet crude for December delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled 37 cents higher at $58.73 a barrel. In London, Brent crude rose 35 cents to settle at $59.03 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

On Monday, crude-oil futures declined by more than $2 a barrel amid mild weather on the East Coast and an expectation that U.S. government data scheduled to be released on Wednesday will show rising inventories of crude. The expiration of November futures contracts for gasoline and heating oil on Tuesday also helped to drag prices lower, brokers said, as did doubts about OPEC's ability to implement its plan to cut 1.2 million barrels a day of production.

Prudential Financial broker Aaron Kildow said prices for oil and refined products could continue to drift lower amid mild autumn temperatures. "This is mostly a weather related market right now," said Kildow, adding that the U.S. is awash in fuel heading into winter.

The most recent report from the federal Energy Information Administration showed commercially available supplies of crude oil in the U.S. stand 5 percent above year ago levels at 332 million barrels, while inventories of distillate, which include heating oil, were 14 percent above year ago levels at 144 million barrels. The next report is scheduled to be released Wednesday.

Alaron Trading Corp. analyst Phil Flynn said energy demand is holding up pretty well in the U.S. despite historically high prices and slowing economic growth. The recent decline in prices, he said, is more a function of increasing supplies - something that could prove short-lived if OPEC carries out its intended output cut.

If energy demand does weaken as a consequence of softer economic growth, then there will be pressure on OPEC to slash its output even further, a scenario that Flynn sees as bearish for oil prices.

All things being equal, Flynn said he is betting on prices bottoming out soon, and then inching higher as the dead of winter arrives.

Testu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo, said that because "huge amounts of oil are available ... I don't think these (OPEC) cuts will have a huge impact."

"We'll have to watch the U.S. winter," Emori said.

Last week, oil prices surged by $2 a barrel after EIA data showed an unexpected decline in U.S. crude-oil inventories. But some analysts believe the market overreacted to the data by failing to account for the impact of a brief shutdown of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, through which 10 percent of all U.S. oil imports flow.

That rethinking helped send oil prices sharply lower on Monday, when Nymex heating oil futures plunged to a 15-month low.

On Tuesday, Nymex heating oil futures dipped 1.46 cent to settle at $1.5869 a gallon, while gasoline futures gained less than a penny to settle at $1.4646 a gallon. Natural gas futures climbed 11.8 cents to settle at $7.534 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Prudential Financial's Kildow said he expects to see prices begin leveling off as winter approaches. "I would expect the market to find a bottom down here, just based on the time of year," he said.