Oil holds near $63 on expected US inventory fall

SINGAPORE, Dec 20 (Reuters) Oil prices held around on Wednesday, ahead of U.S. inventory data that is expected to show a fall in crude stocks after weather delays to tanker deliveries.

U.S. light crude for February traded steady at .46, after gaining 67 cents on Tuesday, when the previous front-month January contract expired up 94 cents at .15.

London Brent February crude rose 5 cents to .86.

''The market will be dependent on U.S. government data and it's possible to test ,'' said Ken Hasegawa at Himawari CX in Tokyo.

U.S. crude supplies were seen falling 1.7 million barrels last week in data due later on Wednesday, because of fog-related shipping delays on the Houston Ship Channel, the waterway feeding the nation's busiest oil and petrochemicals port, analysts said.

Some also expected the shipping delays to have kept refined products imports from reaching U.S. commercial storage, with distillate fuel supplies forecast to be down 800,000 barrels despite mild temperatures, a Reuters survey showed.

Mild weather was expected to last in most of the United States until at least early January, continuing a warm spell that has cut into heating demand, forecasters said this week.

Weather delays are not unusual on the U.S. Gulf Coast this time of the year, but they come after OPEC agreed to cut crude production by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from November and deepen the cut by another 500,000 bpd from February.

A Reuters survey shows OPEC only met around two-thirds of its initial cutbacks, made to stem a price slide from over in July, but analysts say inventories have still started to decline.

U.S. oil inventories are running about 4 percent higher than a year ago, according to the latest government data. In the world's third largest oil consumer Japan, industry data on Wednesday showed crude and kerosene heating stocks both fell.

REUTERS KR HT1422