Light, sweet crude for August delivery lost 23 cents to US$72.58 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange midmorning in Singapore.

The contract Friday gained US$1 to settle at US$72.81 a barrel _ the front-month contract's highest settlement since Aug. 15.

August Brent crude declined 3 cents to US$75.59 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

In southern Nigeria, gunmen on Sunday released a kidnapped British toddler whose father works in the energy industry. Margaret Hill, 3, was reunited with her parents, who said she was fine but hungry and covered in mosquito bites.

The kidnapping on Thursday added to worries about escalating violence in Nigeria because it came on the heels of an attack on a Royal Dutch Shell PLC oil rig by gunmen on Wednesday in which five foreign workers were seized.

Traders had hoped the situation in Africa's largest oil-producing nation would stabilize following the May election of President Umaru Yar'Adua.

Market participants have also focused on a surprisingly small increase in refinery utilization in Thursday's inventory report from the U.S. Energy Department's Energy Information Administration. While utilization rose to 90 percent, it's below the 94 percent to 95 percent most think is necessary to meet peak summer driving demand.

Analysts have worried for months that the refining industry isn't producing enough gas to meet demand. Those concerns have been exacerbated by an unusually high number of refinery outages this year.

The flooding and closure of a refinery in Coffeyville, Kansas, that can produce 2.1 million gallons of gasoline per day has cut supplies in the Plains and some Rockies states and pushed up U.S. retail gasoline prices.

Oil prices reached nearly one-year highs last week, rising 3 percent from June 29's settlement price of US$70.68. That was the front-month contract's first close above US$70 since August.

Nymex heating oil futures fell 0.47 cent to US$2.0904 a gallon (3.8 liters) while natural gas prices inched down 0.7 cent to US$6.437 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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