LONDON, Jan 7: Oil prices fell on Monday as weak energy demand and concerns over more fiscal battles in Washington tempered news of growth in the US jobs market, analysts said.

New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February shed 32 cents to $92.77 a barrel. Brent North Sea crude for February dropped 35 cents to $110.96 in London midday deals. Official data on Friday showed that the US economy generated 155,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate held at 7.8 per cent.

However, a separate US government report last week showing softer fuel demand outweighed that news, Phillip Futures said in a market commentary.

The weaker US energy demand “added to bearish concerns about oil markets, which have been closely monitoring economic data for signals about consumption, which is under pressure because of the struggling economy”, the broker added. The US is the world’s biggest oil consuming nation and the health of its economy is a key influence on crude prices.

Other analysts said that markets remained concerned over more brinkmanship in the US Congress after last week’s 11th-hour deal that averted the fiscal cliff of tax rises and spending cuts which threatened to tip the economy into recession.

While the lawmakers put off the huge tax rises on many wage earners, agreement on spending cuts was put off until the end of February, when they must also hammer out a deal to raise the country’s borrowing limit. Iran revealed that its oil exports had slumped by 40 per cent in the past nine months because of tough Western sanctions.

“There has been a 40 per cent decrease in oil sales and a 45 per cent decrease in repatriating oil money,” Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying, in a reversal of his previous denials of any decline at all.—AFP