On Friday, December 17, at the oil trading sessions in New York and London, oil prices rose sharply again after a slight decline the day before. Thus, on the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) in London, quotes for Brent crude oil futures for the nearest delivery month (February) jumped immediately by almost two dollars per barrel and reached the mark of $43.39 per barrel. In turn, on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), Light Sweet crude oil futures for the nearest delivery month jumped by $2.1 and amounted to $46.28 per barrel. Today, at the morning electronic trading session, January Light Sweet crude oil futures are trading around the mark of $46.2 per barrel (as of 10:10 Kyiv time), – reports the market analysis department of LIGABiznesInform. \n \nThus, world oil prices over the past week became the maximum in the last three weeks. Recall that the resumption of growth on the oil market began on December 13. According to analysts, the main reason for this last week was fears of a shortage of heating fuel during the winter period. This factor particularly noticeably influenced world oil prices on December 17, when, due to expectations of a second wave of winter colds in the Northern Hemisphere, prices for heating fuel rose sharply. As is known, the northeast of the USA is the largest region in the world by volume of heating fuel consumption (and, first of all, fuel oil). At the same time, fuel oil reserves in the USA have now turned out to be almost 13% lower than the reserves of the analogous period of 2003. As a result, futures contracts for the supply of fuel oil based on the results of trading on NYMEX on December 17 grew by 4.2% and reached the highest mark in a week ($1.4680 per gallon). \n