Crude-oil futures moved slightly higher in Asian hours Thursday, with markets reopening after the Christmas holiday. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in February traded at $99.39 a barrel at 0606 GMT, up $0.17 in the Globex electronic session. February Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.12 to $112.02 a barrel. U.S. oil markets digested weekly oil inventory data from the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, which was published after Nymex WTI crude closed 31 cents higher at $99.22 a barrel on Tuesday. Oil stockpiles for the week ended Dec. 20 rose by 500,000 barrels, API data showed. A rise in inventory is bearish for oil, but the API data conflicted with market expectations of a drop in weekly oil stockpiles. U.S. oil stocks are expected to have declined by 2.2 million barrels, on average, last week, […]