Mumbai, March 24 : Futures of brent crude oil rose around 1 per cent on Wednesday after the 4 per cent tumble in its previous trading session. The May contract of Brent crude on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is currently trading at $61.50 per barrel, 1.17 per cent higher than its previous close. The improvement in the crude futures comes after they fell over 4 per cent Tuesday, on the back of concerns over new pandemic restrictions in Europe as well as a stronger dollar. Further, concerns of increased supplies also weighed on the prices. The American Petroleum Institute (API) on Tuesday reported an increase in crude oil inventories of 2.927 million barrels for the week ending Friday, March 19. As a result of the plunge in future, the front-month Brent contract slipped into a small contango for the first time since January. Contango refers to a situation when the front-month contracts are cheaper than future months. The fall in crude prices came at a time when the market sentiments were largely bullish for the past sometime due to lower output from OPEC+ nations. /IANS