Investing.com -- U.S. crude oil futures dipped slightly in post-settlement trading Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a much larger-than-expected rise in weekly domestic crude stockpiles.
Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $73.17 a barrel following the report after settling up 1% at $73.32 a barrel.
U.S. crude inventories increased by 9.043 million barrels for the week ended Jan. 31, compared with a build of 5.025M barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a build of 2.8M barrels.
Gasoline stockpiles decreased by about 2.51M barrels, while distillate inventories -- the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil -- fell by 590,000 barrels.
The official government inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT).