LONDON (AFP) - World oil prices marched towards 55 dollars on worries about low stocks of US heating fuel and tight crude supplies, amid strong demand ahead of the northern hemisphere winter.
The price of reference light sweet crude for delivery in December climbed by 20 cents to 54.67 dollars a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
New York prices hit a record intra-day high of 55.33 dollars on Monday.
In London Brent North Sea crude oil for December delivery increased by 35 cents to 51.07 dollars in early deals.
Earlier Friday, the contract touched 51.23 dollars, close to the all-time high of 51.50 dollars reached 10 days earlier.
"It's the same story ... everybody is worried about winter," Societe Generale analyst Frederic Lasserre said.
"Everybody is making their calculations -- asking whether it will be a cold or mild winter, how much stock of heating oil will be available and what will be the output from refineries?"
After a brief decline in prices Thursday due to profit taking, the market bounced back when a US Department of Interior report showed only a "negligible improvement" in crude production from wells in the Gulf of Mexico, recently hit by devastating hurricanes.
Prices shot up earlier in the week after a US Department of Energy weekly snapshot showed US stocks of distillates -- mostly diesel and heating oil -- fell 1.9 million barrels to 119.0 million in the week to October 15. It was the fifth consecutive weekly decline.
Oil prices' march higher Friday came as a senior Chinese official said that while record oil prices have had only "limited" impact on the Chinese economy, the country needs to keep a close watch on the issue.
"Rising oil prices have consequences for both the world and Chinese economies but the impact on China is limited," said Zheng Jingping, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
"Although the impact is limited, we should still keep a close eye on the trends (and) we need to prepare to adopt measures to meet the challenge."
China, which once produced all its own needs, now ranks second only to the United States among oil-importing countries as its burgeoning economy demands more and more energy.
China currently relies on imports for one third of its supplies and in turn accounts for about seven percent of world oil demand, with both figures expected to continue to rise.
China's growth rate slowed slightly in the third quarter, according to figures Friday, suggesting that government efforts to cool the economy are having only a limited impact.
For the three months to September, the economy grew 9.1 percent compared with a year earlier, after recording 9.8 percent in the first quarter and 9.6 percent in the second, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
10/22/2004 - 11:15 GMT - AFP