Investing.com - Crude prices continued to track higher on Wednesday, amid speculation weekly supply data due later in the day will show a big drawdown in U.S. oil supplies.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration will release its official weekly oil supplies report for the week ended April 13 at 10:30AM ET (1430GMT).
After markets closed Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute said that U.S. oil inventories fell by roughly 1.0 million barrels last week.
The API report also showed a drop of 2.5 million barrels in gasoline stocks, while distillate stocks, which include motor diesel and heating oil, fell by 854,000 barrels.
There are often sharp divergences between the API estimates and the official figures from EIA.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate crude futures tacked on 56 cents, or roughly 0.8%, to $67.08 a barrel by 2:50AM ET (0650GMT). The U.S. benchmark gained around 0.5% in the last session.
Meanwhile, Brent crude futures, the benchmark for oil prices outside the U.S., inched up 56 cents, or about 0.8%, to $72.14 a barrel, after adding 0.2% a day earlier.
Oil ended moderately higher on Tuesday, finding support from geopolitical jitters in the Middle East. The region is the world's most important crude exporter and tension there tends to put oil markets on edge.
In other energy trading, gasoline futures eased up 0.4% to $2.053 a gallon, while heating oil added 0.6% to $2.070 a gallon.
Natural gas futures were little changed at $2.740 per million British thermal units.