New York (Platts)--4Nov2013/532 pm EST/2232 GMT

NYMEX December crude settled near flat Monday after falling to a four-month low early in the session, while the rest of the complex drifted in sedated trade as inventors await economic data and oil inventory reports later in the week.

December crude settled at $94.62/barrel, up 1 cent. The contract fell to $94.06/b in pre-open outcry trade -- the front-month contract's lowest level since June 26.

ICE December Brent settled 32 cents higher at $106.23/b. In refined products action, NYMEX December ULSD settled 81 points lower at $2.8741/gal and December RBOB ended 1.72 cents lower at $2.5282/gal.

"We had a little bit of back-and-forth today on whether Libya production is improving or not and the complex really hesitated to move much lower without news," said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group.

"The market fell to a four-month low pretty quickly. There is a lot of economic data this week and the market is trying to determine if it should care or not," he added.

The front-month Brent/WTI spread settled at $11.61/b after trading in a tight $10.82-$11.69/b range.

Tim Evans, commodity analyst at Citi Futures Perspective, said in a note that rising US crude oil stocks have "gained new respect as a market factor by virtue of the decline and traders now seem more focused on the possible recovery in Libyan oil production rather than the current low rate of production."

Libya's state-owned National Oil Corp. said October 31 that it had lifted a force majeure declaration on crude exports from the eastern Libyan port of Marsa el-Hariga after the security situation at the port improved.

Also, Azzawiya Oil Refining Co. completed maintenance at its secondary units at its 120,000 b/d refinery around October 21 and has since restarted them. The whole site is now back up and running, a refinery source said Monday. The work was planned maintenance that began September 22.

--Alison Ciaccio, alison.ciaccio@platts.com
--Edited by Keiron Greenhalgh, keiron.greenhalgh@platts.com

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