Investing.com — U.S. crude oil futures were little changed in post-settlement trading Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a larger-than-expected decline in weekly domestic crude stocks.
Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $71.50 a barrel following the report after settling up 1.7% at $71.56 a barrel.
U.S. crude inventories decreased by about 4.3 million barrels for the week ended Sept. 20, compared with a build of 2M barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a decline of about 1.1M barrels.
Gasoline stockpiles fell by about 3.4M barrels, while distillate inventories — the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil — declined by 1.1M barrels.
The official government inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).
