Crude oil futures are moving higher in a volatile trading session at the New York Mercantile Exchange but have backed off considerably from their record intraday high above $135 a barrel.

West Texas crude was last trading up 62 cents at $133.79 a barrel, and Brent crude was gaining $1.06 a barrel.

Reformulated gasoline is adding a cent to $3.40 a gallon, while heating oil is up 8 cents at $3.99 a gallon. Near-term natural gas is off 3 cents at $11.62 per million British thermal units.

Crude’s early breakout above $135 a barrel was prompted partly by a story onThe Wall Street Journal’s Web site that reported the International Energy Agency is preparing to lower its projections for global crude oil supplies.

However, U.S. dollar strength in today’s session is stymieing crude oil’s skyward momentum. The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the value of a basket of currencies, is adding 0.42% to 72.20.

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Asad Zaidi/Bloomberg News

Nawaz Sharif during a press conference in Islamabad on Monday.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In an early sign of instability in the new government in Pakistan, the junior partner in the coalition said Monday that it was withdrawing from the cabinet over the government’s failure to reinstate the Supreme Court judges dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf.

The move by that partner, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, to vacate its 9 posts in the 24-member cabinet, including the Finance Ministry, was a step short of leaving the coalition and causing the collapse of the government altogether. But it was a clear indication of just how fragile the coalition remained.

The leader of the party, Nawaz Sharif, said he was standing firm on a pledge made by the coalition in March to bring back 57 supreme and high court judges, including the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after their dismissal under emergency rule last November.

In protracted negotiations that collapsed on Sunday, the senior member of the coalition, the Pakistan Peoples Party led by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, insisted that judges appointed during the emergency by President Musharraf as loyalists to him should also be retained.

“Complications kept on being created,” Mr. Sharif said at a news conference. “We made a promise to the nation, we couldn’t fulfill it, so we are quitting the cabinet.”

Mr. Sharif said the party would not join the opposition, and would continue to work with its partner, issue by issue. But the duration of the two parties’ marriage was a matter of conjecture on Monday. “Several months,” said Ashtar Ausaf Ali, a senior legal adviser to Mr. Sharif.

-The New York Times