By Eadie Chen SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil steadied above $43 on Thursday, after jumping nearly 7 percent a day ago, as traders weighed the impact of OPEC's supply cuts with more signs of weakening demand in the world's top oil users. U.S. crude stocks are expected to have risen by 1.4 million barrels and gasoline by 1.9 million barrels in weekly data due later in the day, potentially adding to the pall of dull economic growth and sharply lower refinery operations in China. U.S. light crude for March delivery shed 2 cents to $43.53 a barrel by 0635 GMT, after jumpimg $2.71 on Wednesday to the highest closing price since January 6. London Brent crude fell 11 cents to $44.91 a barrel. Prices were climbing for a fourth day, as the market's focus shifted toward global conditions and away from the oil storage limitations at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery point for NYMEX crude that had depressed the February contract. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is fully enforcing its deepest-ever oil supply curbs and this should be enough to boost prices, OPEC President and Angolan oil minister Botelho de Vasconcelos told Reuters. But some analysts said the group's 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd) cuts since September might not be enough to turn the tide on a market that has plunged from a record high above $147 a barrel in July, as the global economic crisis hits consumption. "They have to cut 4 to 5 million barrels a day in quotas; they have to get a good portion of that in real, wet barrels off the market," said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank. SLOWING DEMAND Some hopes for economic recovery were raised as U.S. President Barack Obama summoned on his first full day in office his economic advisers, who are working with the Democratic-led Congress on an $825 billion fiscal stimulus package. But closer to the consumer front, the government said U.S. motorists drove 5.3 percent fewer miles in November than they did a year ago, a record decline for the month, as lower pump prices failed to offset the flagging economy. Further indications of the ailing state of demand came from the world's No. 2 oil consumer, with China reporting growth of just 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter, just shy of market expectations for 7.0 percent. For the whole of 2008, the economy expanded by 9.0 percent, the slowest rate in seven years. While crude oil imports in December rose 11.6 percent, refinery production rates fell 7.4 percent from a year earlier, the biggest such drop in seven-and-a-half years, pushing apparent oil demand 5.5 percent lower versus a year ago. The International Monetary Fund is set to sharply cut growth forecasts this month, Managing-Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Wednesday. A Reuters poll on Wednesday showed industry analysts expected global oil demand to contract by 430,000 bpd in 2009, deeper than they had forecast previously, as the economic crisis spreads to the developing world. | 
