Investing.com -- U.S. crude oil futures fell in post-settlement trading Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a smaller-than-expected decline in weekly domestic crude stockpiles.
Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $76.91 a barrel following the report after settling down 1.7% at $77.50 a barrel.
U.S. crude inventories fell by about 2.6 million barrels for the week ended Jan. 10, compared with a draw of 4M barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a draw of 3.5M barrels.
Gasoline stockpiles increased by about 5.4M barrels, while distillate inventories -- the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil -- climbed by 4.9M barrels.
The official government inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT).
