FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Oil futures traded lower on Monday after Nigeria's main militant group declared an indefinite ceasefire over the weekend, easing worries over supply disruptions in the African nation.
Crude for December delivery fell 16 cents to $80.34 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex. It traded as low as $79.56 earlier in the session.
"A ceasefire that was achieved with Nigerian rebels over the weekend resulted in profit-taking by short-term oriented market participants, who, to a large extent, had caused the previous oil price rally to an annual high of $82 a barrel," wrote analysts at Commerzbank in a note to clients.
Nigeria's main militant group -- the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) -- declared an indefinite ceasefire on Sunday in order to encourage dialog with the government, according to media reports, citing a statement from the group.
Attacks by MEND on Nigeria's oil industry, which is mostly located in the Niger Delta, are blamed for a sharp decline in crude production in recent years.
Oil prices gained 3.4% last week. See Friday's Futures Movers.
In other energy news, Chinese oil demand climbed to 33.8 million metric tons in September, as refiners in the world's second-largest oil consumer raised their crude processing rates and as the country's net refined product imports rose, according to a Platts analysis of official data.
Demand in August had fallen by 5.4% from July to 33.02 million metric tons to mark the first month-on-month decline since March, Platts reported from Hong Kong on Friday.
Crude-oil prices had managed to close above the $80 level for the past three trading sessions in New York, with the recent rally likely due to "speculative inflows into the futures market, given the lack of improvement in fundamentals," analysts at Credit Suisse said in a note to clients Monday.
But "we expect oil prices to soften again in the near term into the mid $70s before moving higher into next year," they said.
Elsewhere in the energy markets, November natural-gas futures fell 18 cents, or 4%, to $4.60 per million British thermal units.
