NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Crude oil futures moved towards 55 dollars a barrel Thursday after a government report showed the US inventory of heating oil continued to decline.

    On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil futures for November delivery rose 1.12 dollars to close at 54.76 dollars a barrel. Prices reached 54.90 dollars per barrel, the highest intraday prices since 1983. Crude oil futures had climbed about 10dollars the last month alone. At the same time, the November Brentclimbed 79 cents to settle at 50.84 dollars a barrel on London's International Petroleum Exchange.

    On Thursday, US Energy Department reported that commercially available supplies of heating oil fell by 1.2 million barrels for the week ending Oct. 8, falling to 50.0 million barrels, or 10 percent below year ago levels.

    While some refiners were temporarily shut down to perform maintenance, heating oil supplies would not build dramatically between now and the start of winter. Meanwhile, low storage levelsin Europe further weighed on market because the United States could have a harder time attracting imports this year.

    The underlying problem in oil markets remained that the world'sexcess production capacity was only 1 percent of daily demand, nowestimated to be above 82 million barrels. So, surging price of oilreflected mounting concern that this supply cushion would be inadequate in the event of a large and prolonged loss of daily production. Enditem