Buyers draining American storage points to tighter market Traders awaiting weekly U.S. government count on Wednesday Crude rose in after-hours trading because an oil-industry assessment was said to show a larger-than-expected contraction in U.S. crude stockpiles. Futures extended gains from the settlement in New York after the American Petroleum Institute was said to have reported domestic oil inventories slid by 5.2 million barrels last week. That exceeded the 3.15 million-barrel decline forecast in a Bloomberg survey. If the drop is confirmed by the government on Wednesday, it will aggravate tightening supply conditions stemming from the shutdown of a key North Sea pipeline. “This is continuing the trend of these larger-than-consensus and larger-than-seasonal draws, which is certainly a good sign,” Ashley Petersen, lead oil analyst at Stratas Advisors in New York, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a good bellwether indicator that the demand is still there and the production […]