A few tentative bids and offers for October Middle East crude cargoes were heard earlier this week, but the market has grown quiet once again, traders said.

Most traders appear to be in midst of assessing their trading positions for the fourth quarter, and this coupled with Japan's mid-August "obon" holiday has silenced most discussion for October barrels, they said.

The widely held market view is that October light crude grades would start trading at weak levels, as many traders were expected to seek medium and heavy crudes, a trader said.

He said he believed one of the most recent deals done for September Murban had been at ADNOC plus four cents.

US energy crude futures prices inched up after the release of the latest API weekly data which showed a decline in gasoline inventories.

Gasoline stocksfell 4.12 million barrels to 215.35 million barrels in the week ended August 7, the API said overnight.

Crude stocks, another widely followed market data, rose 1.21 million barrels to 344.74 million barrels, it said.

September Nymex light-crude on the ACCESS after-hours system was bid/asked at $12.82/$12.88 per barrel as of 0300 GMT, up slightly from Tuesday's New York close of $12.76, where it fell 29 cents.

The October Brent/Dubai spread narrowed a touch to $0.50/$0.60 from $0.65/$0.70 on Tuesday.