Oil steady at \ after refinery snags stem rout

SYDNEY, Aug 8 (Reuters) U.S. oil was little changed at around a barrel on Wednesday after news of U.S. refinery outages and expectations of declining crude stocks halted a two-day rout that wiped nearly off prices.

U.S. crude for September delivery fell 15 cents to .27 a barrel by 0130 GMT. The contract rose 36 cents or 0.5 percent on Tuesday, clawing back into positive territory after touching an intraday low of .14, the weakest since July 5.

London's Brent crude fell 37 cents to .43, reversing half the previous day's 63-cent gains.

Gasoline futures led Tuesday's gains, ending a two-day losing streak after traders said that ConocoPhillips had shut down a 130,000 barrel per day (bpd) gasoline-making fluid catalytic cracker at its Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey, just over a week after its restart.

Conoco had also shut a crude unit at its 190,000 bpd oil refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania, on Friday, and the unit was still not back, the trade sources added.

''Prices have bounced back slightly on Conoco's problems...

The market is now taking positions ahead of the U.S. stocks data,'' said Tony Nunan, a risk manager at Mitsubishi in Tokyo.

''Investors are a lot less bullish now after the recent sharp drop in the market.'' Concerns about a possible slowing in the U.S. economy, the debt market squeeze and falling stock prices have shaved about 8 percent off last Wednesday's record price of .77, shaking out some of the speculative length built up during July's rally.

The U.S. Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged on Tuesday, saying that while tightening credit conditions had increased downside risks facing the conomy, inflation was still its main concern.

Amid macro-level uncertainty, some analysts say fundamentals are back at the fore, supported by still low gasoline inventories -- which could be further strained by the latest Conoco production problems -- and by steadily declining crude stocks.

U.S. domestic supplies of crude oil were expected to have fallen by 2.7 million barrels last week, the fifth week in a row, as refinery usage continued to increase, an expanded Reuters poll of industry analysts showed on Tuesday.

The poll called for a build of 1.8 million barrels in distillate supplies and an increase of 900,000 barrels in inventories of gasoline, however. The data is due for release at 1430 GMT on Wednesday. S] REUTERS SRS VP0756