Mumbai, Aug 11 (IANS): The Indian rupee depreciated 12 paise at close on Thursday after reversing early gains due to sharp rise in crude oil prices.

At the interbank foreign exchange market, rupee ended at 79.64, after opening strong at 79.2225 from its previous close of 79.52.

The Brent crude oil prices in the international market has risen sharply and at the close of Indian market hours, it was $98.39 a barrel, up 1.02 per cent.

The rupee appreciated in the early trade after the US inflation data for July came in below the estimates, raising hopes that the Federal Reserve may not be that aggressive in hiking interest rates in its next meeting.

"The lower US CPI print did trim the odds of a 75 bps rate hike in September with DXY cooling off below 105.00 levels. But the lower inflation figure is purely because of cooling off in oil & gas prices last month. Food and shelter costs still continues to be sticky.

"Thus on the contrary of data, Fed members continue to have their hawkish stance in place and still believe inflation is still unacceptably high," said Kunal Sodhani, Vice President, Global Trading Centre, Shinhan Bank.

Meanwhile, Sensex ended up 515.31 points or 0.88 per cent at 59,332.60, while Nifty ended 124.25 points or 0.71 per cent higher at 17,659.00 on Thursday.