Heating oil expensive, but supplies still ample Last year, fuel shortages forced dealer rationing

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Despite the high cost of heating oil, the fuel industry says supplies are holding up better than last year.

Last year, oil trucks waited in lines at terminals for as long as five hours. Short supplies forced Sprague Energy and Irving Oil to limit the amount of fuel the trucks could take away.

Terminals along the Piscataqua River accommodate oil tankers from the Atlantic that help supply fuel to New Hampshire, southern Maine and northeastern Massachusetts.

“We have not run into any shortages. It’s nothing like last year,” said Debbie Garrity, manager of Goodwin Oil Co. in Portsmouth.

Don Lamprey of Lamprey Brothers Inc., an oil supplier in Portsmouth, said some companies cannot get oil on the spot market and must have contracts with the suppliers.

“But the five-hour wait was definitely last year,” he said.

Heating oil prices, which spiked in February, have yet to come down. Oil is costing $1.56 a gallon on average nationwide, compared to about $1 at the beginning of the heating season a year ago, according to the United States Energy Department.

Although heating oil remains expensive, the industry hopes there will be enough of it this year.

“So far, there’s been ample

supply,” said Jim Therriault, director of commercial sales for Sprague Energy in Newington. Oil trucks filling up at the deep water terminals wait a little longer than normal, he said, but it doesn’t compare to last year’s wait.

Merelise O’Connor, deputy director for the Governor’s Office of Energy and Community Services, said, “If the situation is tight, we are normally informed and … no shortages have been reported.”