Investing.com -- U.S. crude oil futures was little changed post-settlement trading Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a surprise rise in weekly domestic crude stocks.

Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, traded at $73.12 a barrel following the report after settling down 0.4%% at $74.04 a barrel.

U.S. crude inventories increased by about 347,000 barrels for the week ended Aug. 16, compared with a draw of 5.2M barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a decline of about 2.8M barrels.

Gasoline stockpiles fell by about 1M barrels, while distillate inventories -- the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil -- fell by 2.2M barrels.

The official government inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).

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