Oil prices held above $63 a barrel on Wednesday, pinned near their record high by lingering threat of attacks in Saudi Arabia, tensions over Iran's nuclear programme and refinery outages in the United States. U.S. crude futures was up 15 cents to $63.22 a barrel, having succumbed to profit-taking in late Tuesday session after prices hit an all-time high of $64.27 early on. London Brent crude rose 14 cents to $62.12 a barrel. Prices rallied this week as the United States shut its missions in Saudi Arabia, the world's top exporter, for two days because of the threat of attacks. The missions reopened on Wednesday but the brief closure jangled nerves over supplies from the kingdom, which has been battling a two-year campaign of al Qaeda violence. Crude oil producers and refiners have struggled to keep up with strong demand growth over the past two years, reducing the cushion of spare capacity needed to make up for any sudden outages, such as a disruption in exports from the Middle East. U.S. inventories of crude oil and distillates such as heating oil are running at above-average levels, but gasoline stocks are below normal and may have slid again last week, analysts say. Government data on stocks is due at 1430 GMT. "The market is highly sensitised to headlines that could affect supply. Anxiety over supplies and possible disruptions are the key drivers of price now," said Tony Nunan, a manager at Mitsubishi Corp's international energy business in Tokyo. "It's hard to be bearish in a market like this. Levels came off the record high mainly due to profit-taking because prices went up too quickly. But $65-$70 seems a very distinct possibility as we approach winter." Supply security fears have also reared their head in Iran, OPEC's second biggest producer, which is at odds with Western governments over its nuclear programme. Iran has resumed work at a uranium conversion plant, defying EU warnings that it could be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, but newly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a conciliatory tone on Tuesday. "I have new initiatives and proposals which I will present after my government takes office. We are ready for talks and negotiations have never been interrupted by us," Ahmadinejad was reported to have said. REFINING FOCUS Dealers took little solace in OPEC's reiteration of its commitment to "reasonable prices", as both traders and the cartel say it's a shortage of refining capacity, not crude oil, that has pushed prices up more than 45 percent this year. Capacity has been further tested by nearly a dozen unplanned refinery outages in the past few weeks as plants show the strain of keeping up with oil demand that shows little sign of being deterred by record-high gasoline and fuel prices. U.S. weekly gasoline stocks are expected to have dropped by 1.9 million barrels last week amid the refinery glitches and strong demand in the last month of the peak summer season, a Reuters survey of 13 analysts found. Stocks of distillates, already in the upper half of their seasonal norm, are forecast to have risen 1.7 million barrels. Nunan said prices were unlikely to fall below $60 a barrel in the near term as the market headed for the peak-demand season in winter, but could begin to drift lower if refiners maintained robust heating fuel stocks ahead of the fourth quarter. "This is on the very huge assumption that nothing goes wrong. And that's a very large assumption indeed," he said.