Light, sweet crude for April delivery rose 30 cents to $60.37 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Crude inventories rose by 3.7 million barrels to 327.6 million barrels in the week ending Feb. 16, the Energy Information Administration said Thursday. But gasoline inventories fell by 3.1 million barrels to 222.1 million barrels, and distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, fell by 5.0 million barrels to 128.3 million barrels. Most of the drop in distillates was due to diminishing heating oil supplies.

Analysts were expecting, on average, a modest rise in crude oil and gasoline inventories and a smaller drop in distillates.

Heating oil futures rose more than 2 cents to $1.7030 a gallon; gasoline futures rose 3 cents to $1.7350 a gallon; and natural gas prices dropped 6 cents to $7.65 per 1,000 cubic feet.

The EIA also reported Thursday that natural gas in storage fell by 223 billion cubic feet to 1.865 trillion cubic feet, around what the market was expecting.

Meanwhile Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, was expected to report that Iran -- OPEC's No. 2 exporter -- is still enriching uranium, which could trigger harsher U.N. sanctions.

On Wednesday, Iran called for talks with the U.S. regarding its uranium enrichment activities, but showed no signs of halting its program.

Light sweet crude rose 2.1 percent on Wednesday to settle above $60 a barrel on the Nymex for the first time this year following increasing tensions over Iran's uranium enrichment program and shutdowns of a pipeline and an oil field.

However, the effects of the two shutdowns should be short-lived. TEPPCO Partners LP said its refined products pipeline, which had a leak in Indiana, should restart in two days, while BP PLC said its Northstar oil field should resume operations next week, according to Dow Jones Newswires.