Light, sweet crude for June delivery fell 4 cents to $63.13 a barrel in Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, mid-afternoon in Singapore.

The contract gained 71 cents to settle at $63.17 a barrel Tuesday following news that protests in Nigeria have cut oil production by 170,000 barrels per day.

Brent crude contract for June delivery slid 11 cents to $68 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

The market's concerns about the unrest in Nigeria's oil industry were tempered by forecasts that a midweek U.S. petroleum supply snapshot later Wednesday will show domestic fuel inventories rose last week, analysts said.

"There's an expectation that U.S. domestic gasoline stocks will likely increase and crude inventories may also increase due to rising imports," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "These expectations serve to limit the surge in crude oil futures."

Crude stocks were likely to have risen by 500,000 barrels last week, and gasoline stocks were expected to have gained 900,000 barrels, according to a Dow Jones Newswires poll of analysts' expectations ahead of the report.