UPDATE 2-US crude unit outages abnormally high in April-EIA

(Recasts lead, adds details about distillate, regions)

WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - U.S. crude oil refining outages will be higher than normal in April, but will fall below average for rest of the second quarter, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

Some 767,400 barrels per day of U.S. oil refining capacity will be shut down in April, more than the 670,000 bpd typically shut during the month.

But weaker U.S. fuel demand as a result of the economic downturn will temper the effects by reducing the need for high refinery utilization rates this year, the EIA said.

"At the U.S. level, available capacity adjusted for outages appears adequate to meet projected demand through June 2009," the EIA said.

Total refinery outages were also above average from December to February, but this trend is expected to end after April.

Planned and unplanned outage levels are expected to below normal for the next two months with an estimated 402,774 bpd of capacity shut down in May and 252,333 bpd in June. Typical outage levels for May and June are 620,000 bpd and 460,000 bpd, respectively.

Outages of gasoline-making U.S. fluid catalytic cracking units are expected to reach 297,833 bpd in April, slightly below the 310,000 bpd in outages typical for the month. In May outages of FCC units are expected to be above average at 240,161 bpd, before slipping below normal to 150,000 bpd in June.

Regionally, the EIA warned that the East Coast PADD 1 section of the country may experience FCC unit outages through April that will require more gasoline to be brought into the area.