Oil prices extended their decline in Asian trading hours on profit-taking as a rise in US crude reserves eased worries about tight supplies, dealers said. At 11.40 am (0340 GMT) here, New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, had fallen 0.02 usd to 63.23 usd a barrel from 63.25 usd in the US overnight. Prices had dropped 2.83 usd in closing deals in New York overnight as they retreated from last week's record price of above 67 usd. Recent supply fears, heightened by production outages at US refineries, had pushed New York futures to a historic high of 67.10 usd last Friday. "I think the crude inventory is still too high to justify 70 usd, so the market got ahead of itself," said Tony Nunan, manager for energy risk management at Mitsubishi Corp's international petroleum business in Tokyo. The weekly US Department of Energy (DoE) petroleum report released overnight showed crude oil inventories rose by 0.3 mln barrels to 321.1 mln barrels in the week to Aug 12, which is above the upper end of the average range at this time of the year. It said gasoline stockpiles fell by 5.0 mln barrels in the week to Aug 12, the seventh straight week of decline. The fall was far more than the 1.5 mln drop that had been forecast. Stockpiles of distillate fuel, which make heating oil and diesel, increased by 1.2 mln barrels to 131.1 mln, in line with market expectations of an increase of 1.6 mln barrels. Jason Schenker at Wachovia Securities said the market action was an "unexpected reaction to the data", but pointed out that more refineries are coming on line and that "we're getting close to the end of the gasoline season" in the US.