TOKYO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures fell back below $80 a barrel by late Monday morning in Asia, failing to find support from a reported rise in September Chinese oil demand, as traders took in profits from last week's 3.4% climb in prices.
Crude for December delivery was down 72 cents at $79.78 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex by late morning in Tokyo. It traded as high as $80 and as low as $79.57 during the Globex trading session.
On Friday, the front-month contract fell 65 cents, or 0.8%, to $81.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It scored a 3.4% gain for last week. See Friday's Futures Movers.
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 from Singapore.
But "we expect oil prices to soften again in the near term into the mid $70s before moving higher into next year," they said.
The Credit Suisse analysts also said a firmer U.S. dollar capped gains in the commodity markets. The dollar rose to its highest level in a month against the Japanese yen on Friday, though it later pulled back to 91.85 yen Monday, compared with 92.10 yen late Friday in New York.
