Oil eased on Wednesday, but held in sight of three-year highs reached the previous day, as rising U.S. fuel inventories and production weighed on an otherwise bullish market.

Overall, the environment for oil is bullish. Supplier cutbacks, steady demand growth, geopolitical tensions and a favourable structure in the futures market have attracted record investment in oil this year.

A rise in U.S. government borrowing costs to their highest since 2013 this week has tempered some investor appetite for risk, but analysts said they believed Brent crude may have another attempt at marking new 2018 highs above $75 a barrel. Weekly data on Tuesday that showed a rise in U.S. crude inventories also subdued the oil price somewhat.

Brent crude oil futures were down 14 cents at $73.72 a barrel at 1128 GMT, some 2 percent below the November 2014 high of $75.47 reached on Tuesday.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures were down 4 cents at $67.66 a barrel.

“There's a good chance we try again to break $75 again. We still have all the different soundbites on Iran and the May 12 deadline is coming up,” Petromatrix strategist Olivier Jakob said, referring to an upcoming date by which the United States has said it will withdraw from a nuclear deal with Iran if the other signatories to the deal do not meet certain conditions.

The prospect of fresh sanctions on Tehran and disruption to the country's oil flows has helped push the oil price to its highest since late 2014 this month.

“Market sentiment is turning increasingly bullish towards the commodity,” said Lukman Otunuga, research analyst at futures brokerage FXTM.