Colder weather across much of the northern hemisphere in late December and early January accelerated the burn-off of a global distillate fuel surplus."A blast of cold weather was not a necessary condition for global distillate inventories to fall back within bounds, but it will certainly help to speed the process along," said analysts at Barclays Capital Research, a division of Barclays Bank PLC, London. "While average December temperatures hit multiyear lows in some key heating oil-consuming areas in Europe and Asia, the US winter has so far been distinctly cold, but the difference from normal conditions has been less extreme."The oil home-heating customer-weighted de...