Oil edges down to above $63 after brief gain

SEOUL, Dec 21 (Reuters) Oil fell on Thursday, more than reversing the previous day's small gains after traders wrote off a sharp fall in U.S. crude inventories to the short-term impact of Gulf Coast shipping disruptions, which have begun to ease.

U.S. light crude for February fell 48 cents to .24 a barrel by 0223 GMT, after having touched a three-month high above a barrel on Wednesday. London Brent February crude fell 35 cents to .88.

U.S. inventory data on Wednesday showed that crude stocks fell 6.3 million barrels, a much steeper drop than the 1.7 million barrel slip analysts expected. Gasoline and distillate stockpiles rose moderately. S] Dealers had anticipated some decline in stocks after fog caused intermittent delays on the Houston Ship Channel, the waterway feeding the nation's busiest oil and petrochemicals port, which led to a drop in weekly imports.

The channel was open on Wednesday afternoon and the number of ships queueing to transit fell, although officials warned that heavy fog could force it to close in the evening.

Dealers said the market had already factored in the effects of shipping delays and saw little scope for further gains as dealers shied from taking fresh positions ahead of the holidays.

''Oil prices have gone up already recently, so the market was less influenced by the inventory data,'' said James Kim, analyst at Woori Investment and Securities.

The data showed U.S. commercial crude and refined product stocks combined were 400,000 barrels lower than the same time a year ago, a sharp fall from a huge 76 million barrels year-on-year surplus at the end of September.

But crude stocks still stand nearly 2 percent higher than they were a year ago.

Prices were also under pressure from expectations that exceptionally mild U.S. winter weather would continue in most of the United States until at least early January, keeping heating demand below normal.

Temperatures in the major Northeast heating oil consuming region will average 5 to 12 degrees Farenheit above normal through the weekend, forecasters DTN Meteorlogix said.

REUTERS CS RK1216