Investing.com -- U.S. crude oil futures inched higher in post-settlement trading Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a larger-than-expected decline in weekly domestic crude stockpiles.
Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $74.42 a barrel following the report after settling up 0.9% at $74.25 a barrel.
U.S. crude inventories fell by about 4 million barrels for the week ended Jan. 3, compared with a draw of 1.4M barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a draw of just 250,000 barrels.
Gasoline stockpiles increased by about 7.3M (NYSE:MMM) barrels, while distillate inventories -- the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil -- climbed by 3.2M barrels.
The official government inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT).
