UPDATE 8-Brent choppy, US crude boosted by gasoline surge

* Hess shutting New Jersey refinery, gasoline futures surge

* U.S. durable goods boost, home sales data weighs on oil

* U.S. Fed FOMC 2-day meeting on Tuesday-Wednesday

* Coming up: API oil inventory data 4:30 p.m. EST Tuesday

(Recasts, updates prices, market activity; changes dateline, pvs LONDON)

NEW YORK, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Brent crude futures seesawed on Monday, while strong U.S. gasoline futures helped support U.S. crude after news that Hess Corp plans to close a New Jersey refinery.

Front-month U.S. February gasoline futures, set to expire on Thursday, surged 2 percent on news that Hess plans to close the 70,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Port Reading, New Jersey, by the end of February.

Crude got a lift from U.S. government durable goods data showing a 0.2 percent rise last month in non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for investment plans. But gains were limited by a separate report showing pending home sales fell 4.3 percent in December.

"Crude got a boost from the durable goods but the home sales number disappointed," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Price Futures Group in New York.

The oil futures complex kept drawing support from turmoil in Africa and the Middle East, getting an additional boost from news of an attack on an oil pipeline in Algeria by suspected Islamist militants.

Brent March crude dipped 1 cent to $113.27 a barrel at 1:06 p.m. EST (1806 GMT), having traded swung from $112.60 to $113.80. The $113.80 session peak was 4 cents below Friday's session high.

U.S. March crude was up 39 cents at $96.27 a barrel, also seeing choppy trading moving from $95.47 to $96.81.

U.S. February RBOB gasoline was up 5.52 cents at $2.9306 a gallon, having reached $2.9442, highest price since October.

U.S. February heating oil eased, slipping less than a penny on the milder winter temperatures expected this week in the Northeast, the country's top heating oil consuming region.

AWAITING FEDERAL RESERVE, JOBS DATA

"An improving economic outlook and rising stock markets are supporting oil markets," said Carsten Fritsch, senior oil analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.

"We have seen some profit-taking from last week's highs but price dips are seen as buying opportunities at the moment."

The Federal Reserve, whose policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday, has said it expects to keep short-term interest rates exceptionally low to help support the economy.

U.S. nonfarm payroll figures due on Friday are likely to show the jobless rate unchanged in January and that the U.S. economy created 155,000 jobs, according to economists polled by Reuters.

Manufacturing output in China and the United States is rising at its quickest pace in about two years while German business morale improved for a third straight month in January, fuelling expectations of higher oil demand.

In addition to Syria's conflict reinforcing worries about the region's oil supply and supporting crude futures, a fifth day of violence in Egypt prompted Egypt's president to declare a state of emergency on Sunday in an attempt to end a wave of unrest.

World powers have asked Iran to hold a new round of talks over its nuclear program in February, while expressing disappointment over Tehran's reluctance to schedule negotiations.

An aide to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying on Saturday that Teghran would consider any attack on Syria an attack on Iran.

(Reporting by Robert Gibbons in New York, Christopher Johnson in London and Jessica Jaganathan in Singapore; Editing by David Gregorio)