Oil prices – Nov 27

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Fortunes shift as oil prices soar
Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
Millionaires are created in Moscow but French fishermen riot over lost profit as effects ripple around the globe.

…The ripples from this price surge are washing up on every shore. It’s creating new wealth in such locales as Moscow, where oil barons are almost at a loss about how to spend their riches. But the effects in some other places are less predictable. Israelis fear a rush of people will chop down trees to heat their homes. Farmers in northern Iraq are abandoning their fields to sell gas. Fishermen in France, stung by the price of diesel, have rioted.

As Californians cope with gasoline near $3.50 a gallon and other Americans brace for a winter of high heating bills, we asked Times correspondents how the skyrocketing prices are affecting their corner of the world. Here’s what they found.
(24 November 2007)

A big toll on small oil businesses
Walter Griffin, Bangor Daily News
BELFAST, Maine – Increases in fuel oil prices are not only hitting the consumer; they are taking their toll on small, independent oil dealers.

With home heating oil running more than $3 per gallon with no ceiling in sight, the smaller dealers are struggling to keep their businesses solvent.

The higher prices have forced them to reduce their profit margins in order to retain customers and compete with the larger suppliers, according to Matthew Porter, owner of Tidewater Oil Co. in Belfast.

Porter said he centered his business plan on delivering oil and kerosene on a cash-price basis. He said the higher prices mean that customers order oil more frequently, and when that happens his expenses rise proportionally.

“The higher the price, the less the small oil companies are making,” Porter said Wednesday. “It does impact you because it’s getting tougher for people to order larger quantities, and it costs me money to make smaller deliveries. My travel costs have almost doubled.”
(24 November 2007)

Fuel prices produce gasps, fumes
Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times
A California tourist town’s residents are so peeved at the pump that they’ll drive miles to fill up more cheaply.
—
As Californians brace for ever-higher gasoline prices, they can glimpse what might be their future in this tiny Eastern Sierra town, where motorists pay more than $4 a gallon at the two gas stations.

The Shell station in Bridgeport, a tourist town of 850 residents during the summertime peak, is charging $4.09 a gallon for regular. The outlet posted prices above the $4 mark at least four other times this year.

Rosemary Glazier, who works in Bridgeport as Mono County’s assistant finance director, is so irritated by the prices that she refuses to fill up at the local stations.

“It makes the whole town look bad,” Glazier said of the $4-plus prices. Instead, she drives all the way to Gardnerville in Nevada, 62 miles north of Bridgeport, where gas is substantially cheaper.

Soon, however, there may be no escape.

Driven largely by the soaring cost of crude oil, pump prices across the country are approaching the lofty levels that set records during the summer — an unprecedented turn of events that will make this Thanksgiving weekend the most expensive ever for millions of travelers. And $4 fuel may become a more common sight, perhaps as early as next year, some gas-watchers predict.
(23 November 2007)
Contributor Jim Barton writes:
The author selected this town as a metaphor, and maybe well so. Merchants in the town are contantly facing “true-cost-pricing” as vendors tack on fuel surcharges for delivering goods to the middle of nowhere.

Gas thefts on the rise with high prices
Kennebec Journal, via Associated Press
AUGUSTA, Maine-Gasoline prices aren’t the only thing on the rise.

So are the numbers of gas thefts.

As the price of gas remains above $3 a gallon, police say they are getting more reports of drivers filling their tanks and taking off without paying.

Augusta police Sergeant Mark Desjardin says his department has gotten 26 gas theft complaints since the start of October.

At a Lukoil station in Augusta, general manager Victor Refai says drive-offs are happening almost every day even though employees ask that drivers prepay for their purchases. He says if his cashiers are busy, some motorists will simply drive off after filling up.
(23 November 2007)
Contributor Wag the Dog writes:
It is not just in Augusta, Maine. Rockport, Corpus Christy, TX has enacted a prepay policy. (www.caller.com/news/2007/nov/25/ordinance-helps-prevent-gas-theft/)

Gas drive-offs are also on the rise in Werrington, Australia. (www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=179339&format=html)