Oil prices edge up ahead of U.S. inventory data

SEOUL, May 2 (Reuters) Oil prices inched up on Wednesday on renewed buying interest, after a slide the previous session on an expected rebound in refinery production in the United States.

London Brent crude for June gained 29 cents at $67.29 a barrel by 0401 GMT, after falling 65 cents on Tuesday. U.S. light sweet crude was up 7 cents at $64.47, after losing $1.31 a day earlier.

U.S. refinery production is expected to have increased to help companies build up stockpiles ahead of peak summer demand, outweighing a forecast drop in gasoline inventories last week in data due later on Wednesday, analysts said in a Reuters survey.

''The tight gasoline market may have moved the prices slightly but traders aren't really worried about it as refiner runs are expected to go up and crude inventories are expected to be reasonable,'' said Takeda Makoto, analyst at Bansei Securities.

The 1 million-barrel fall seen for gasoline stocks would be the 12th consecutive weekly drop since Feb. 2, but refinery runs, which many analysts saw as key to last week's data, are expected to have risen by 0.7 percentage points to 88.5 percent of capacity.

Rising U.S. gasoline futures have underpinned oil prices in recent weeks, as refinery maintenance and glitches have drawn down fuel inventories sharply since early February.

Crude stocks are seen rising 1 million barrels, the survey showed Production at the 400,000 barrels per day Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska has returned to normal after a week of maintenance, a spokesman for operator BP Plc said.

Prices have pulled back in the past two sessions to erase gains on Friday that came after top exporter Saudi Arabia said it had foiled a plot to attack oil facilities.

Brent is still up nearly 11 percent this year following OPEC production cuts and on worries over the potential for supply disruptions from Iran, following its nuclear dispute with the West, as well as other geopolitical supply risks.

Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ali al-Jarrah al-Sabah said on Tuesday there is no need yet for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to consider boosting oil supplies, but it would not hesitate to do so if necessary. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers are set to reassure Asian consumers over supply in a meeting in Riyadh on Wednesday.

OPEC-member Venezuela stripped the world's biggest oil companies of operational control over massive Orinoco Belt crude projects, one of the largest oil deposits outside the Middle East, sending in workers backed by troops on Tuesday to occupy the multi-billion-dollar installations.

REUTERS SR BD1118