Investing.com — U.S. crude oil futures were dipped in post-settlement trading Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a larger-than-expected decline in weekly domestic crude inventories, though gasoline stocks ticked up.
Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $69.80 a barrel following the report after settling down 0.9% at $70.08 a barrel.
U.S. crude inventories fell by about 4.7M barrels for the week ended Dec, 13 compared with a build of 499,000 barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a draw of 1.9M barrels.
Gasoline stockpiles increased by about 2.4M barrels, while distillate inventories — the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil — climbed by 700,000 barrels.
The official government inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).
