Oil prices up following crude inventories' fall

HOUSTON, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a staggeringly large draw of 11.19 million barrels of U.S. crude oil inventories for the week ending Jan. 5, marking six large draws.

Last week, the API reported a large draw of 4.992 million barrels of crude oil, along with an increase in gasoline inventories of 1.87 million barrels.

This week, the API reported another build in gasoline inventories of 4.338 million barrels for the week ending Jan. 5.

The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was trading up 2.33 percent at 63.17 U.S. dollars Tuesday afternoon. The Brent benchmark was trading up 1.76 percent at 68.97 dollars.

The continued drop in U.S. crude oil inventories comes as the country continues to ramp up production, hitting the second highest production level of 2017 in the last week of December with 9,782 million barrels per day. Enditem