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(Reuters) - Brent crude slipped toward $115 a barrel on Monday on concerns about demand after disappointing jobs data from top consumer United States, while investors eyed an OPEC meeting later this week to see if the group would lift output.
Gulf Arab members led by Saudi Arabia will push for a rise in oil supply, but were likely to face opposition from OPEC's leading hawks Iran and Venezuela.
"Today there is no shortage of supply. OPEC will do its job," the chief executive of the French energy giant Total (TOTF.PA) said at a conference in Kuala Lumpur.
Brent crude fell 43 cents to $115.41 a barrel by 0516 GMT (12:16 a.m. ET), after settling up 30 cents on Friday. U.S. crude slipped 28 cents to $99.94 a barrel.
A softer dollar and political upheaval in the Middle East, however, kept a floor under oil prices.
"We are going to have sideways trade, basically because the weaker economy means weaker crude oil prices because of less demand in the U.S., but we have Yemen that's going to keep it high (along with) the weaker dollar," Tony Nunan, a risk manager with Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Corp, said.
U.S. data showed payrolls rose by 54,000 in May, the softest reading since September, and the country's jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent in May from 9 percent in April.
Falling oil demand and higher supplies in the world's largest economy are pushing prices lower, analysts said. U.S. crude oil stocks rose in the week to May 27 to their highest seasonal level for May since 1990.
TransCanada Corp's (TRP.TO) 591,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity Keystone pipeline -- which carries oil from Alberta to the U.S. oil hub of Cushing -- resumed shipping crude oil, one week after being shut by a leak at a Kansas pumping station, the Calgary-based company said in a statement.
Technical charts indicated that oil prices may drop in the short term, with Brent expected to slip to $112 per barrel and U.S. oil expected to revisit the Friday low of $98.12 per barrel.
The dollar .DXY was almost flat against a basket of major currencies, after sliding to a one-month low earlier in the day as the jobs data bolstered expectations that U.S. interest rates will stay low for longer. The index has lost almost 7 percent so far this year.
"The value of the dollar and the way it's declining is keeping some of these commodities at levels which are not sustainable," Jonathan Barratt, managing director of Commodity Broking Services in Sydney, said.
MIDDLE EAST SUPPORTS
Violence in the Middle East underpinned prices due to worries that instability could spill over to some of the world's largest oil and gas producers and disrupt global supplies.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was recovering from an operation in Saudi Arabia to remove shrapnel from his chest while a truce between his troops and a tribal federation appeared to be holding.
Protesters, interpreting Saleh's absence as a sign that his grip on power was weakening, celebrated on the streets of Sanaa where they have been staging anti-government demonstrations since January.
Syrian forces shot dead 31 people during demonstrations in a northwestern town and official media said gunmen killed four policemen in the same town.
Protests against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad have grown despite reform gestures dismissed by the opposition and a continuing crackdown that has killed at least 1,100 people since the uprising erupted two months ago.
(Editing by Himani Sarkar)
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