Oil prices fell Thursday morning after cold weather in Europe and North America increased demand for fuel. New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for February delivery shed 64 cents to 82.54 dollars a barrel and was on course to end lower for the first time in ten sessions.
Despite the spike in demand the weekly inventory report from the US Department of Energy (DoE) released yesterday showed that crude oil reserves rose by 1.3 million barrels in the week ending January 1, instead of the expected drop of some 300,000 barrels.