API reports surprise U.S. crude inventory build

HOUSTON, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- The American Petroleum Institute (API) data on Tuesday revealed a surprise build of 4.755-million-barrel of the crude oil inventories for last week, ending the streak of seven large draws in the previous seven weeks.

Last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a huge draw of 5.121 million barrels of crude oil, along with an increase in gasoline inventories of 1.782 million barrels.

This week, the API reported another build in gasoline inventories of 4.117 million barrels for the week.

Both the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent benchmarks saw big gains on Tuesday as the IMF painted a rosy picture of the global economy for 2018 and 2019.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, WTI traded up 1.42 percent at 64.47 U.S. dollars per barrel. The Brent benchmark traded up 1.22 percent at 69.87 dollars per barrel, slipped from 70-plus dollars of the day. the 70 dollasrs is a threshold for significant psychological level to break through. Enditem