Oil prices fell Monday despite forecasts of continued cold weather across the U.S. East Coast, a major market for heating oil.

An unusually warm winter in the U.S. drove crude oil below $50 a barrel earlier this month, but the price has since risen about 10 percent as cold weather returned. Forecasters predicted below-normal temperatures on the U.S. East Coast region would continue into at least the first week of February.

"The continuation of cold weather in the United States -- after a pretty warm start of the winter -- helps shore up prices because if there was no cold weather at all, there would be huge inventories," said Tobin Gorey, a commodity strategist with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. "The market's not worried about that any longer."

Light, sweet crude for March delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 34 cents to $55.08 a barrel in electronic trading by early afternoon in Europe. The contract had risen $1.19 on Friday.