November 7, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 1,1423

LONDON, Nov 6: Oil prices continued to trawl around their lowest level in almost five months here on Wednesday as the market gave up early modest gains following the release of weekly US inventory statistics.

The price of reference Brent North Sea crude oil for December delivery stood at 24.11 dollars a barrel here against 24.12 dollars at the end of the previous session.

In New York, the benchmark light sweet crude December contract slipped four cents to 26.10 dollars a barrel.

Crude oil stocks rose 3.4 million barrels, or 1.2 per cent, to 290.5 million in the week ended Nov 1 from the previous week, the US Department of Energy (DoE) said.

The DoE data compared with data released late Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute, a private trade association, which estimated that crude oil stocks rose 2.3 million barrels to 291.6 million in the same period.

The DoE reported a 2.2 million barrel drop in gasoline stocks and a 1.9 million barrel fall in distillate fuel stocks.—AFP