Investing.com -- U.S. crude oil futures fell below post-settlement levels Tuesday despite the American Petroleum Institute reporting a larger-than-expected increase in weekly domestic crude stockpiles.

Crude Oil WTI Futures , the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $66.57 a barrel following the report after settling down 1% at $66.90 a barrel.

U.S. crude inventories increased by 4.5M barrels for the week ended Mar. 14, compared with a build of 4.2M barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a build of just 1.2M barrels.

Gasoline stockpiles decreased by about 1.7N barrels, while distillate inventories -- the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil -- fell by 2.1M barrels.

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