The annual heating oil tale of woe

The more I read the morning newspaper the more things seem like Yogi Berra’s “d?j? vu all over again,” especially when it comes to news stories about the cost of gasoline and home heating oil.

Monday morning’s paper was a case in point. “Higher home heating costs expected,” blared the Page One headline, and if there were any readers who didn’t mutter, “Gee. What a surprise,” they most likely haven’t lived in this neck of the woods for long.

The stock “higher-heating-costs” headline is one that, in the old days of hot metal and cold type, printers in the newspaper’s back shop would have judiciously retrieved from the page after the press run and stored amongst the standing ads for trusses and Lydia Pinkham pills for future use as the heating season draws nearer.

Today, in the technologically advanced newsroom, some enterprising editor would be well served to save the whole damn story, including the headline, in his computer bank. Then, as the oil cartels continue to fatten us up for the annual kill, he could just plug it into the page and get on with more pressing business. Because, in truth, the story never really changes a whole lot from one cycle to the next. You can look it up.

“While weather is a major determinant of winter heating costs, analysts said homeowners in the Northeast and Midwest may get hit harder than usual, even if temperatures are in their normal range,” Monday’s Associated Press article reported. If you haven’t heard that mantra so many times you can recite it backward in your sleep, I’ll gladly eat my hat. (No ketchup. Hold the fries.)

“I would be shocked if we don’t see soaring natural gas and heating oil prices,” said a spokesman for the Oil Price Information Service quoted in the Monday morning story. Wouldn’t we all, Big Guy. Lord knows, we’ve long been so conditioned to expect a price hike that if such legalized extortion didn’t happen on a regular basis we’d demand a congressional investigation.

The sophisticates love to roll their eyes heavenward while explaining to us rubes that the price of heating oil and gasoline depends upon many mitigating factors that we are not nearly smart enough to even begin to comprehend. Seasonality in demand. Changes in the cost of crude oil. Competition in local markets. Regional operating costs. Global warming. And now wild-eyed Iraqis blowing up their oil pipelines just for the hell of it. Whatever.

In the real world though, one man’s mitigating factor can be another man’s funny business, as we have seen in any number of recent corporate scandals that have come crashing down around the shoulders of assorted high rollers as they are led off in handcuffs. One might easier believe the experts when they claim there is nothing fishy going on in the gasoline and heating oil-pricing business if there didn’t exist such gas-pump mysteries as one may encounter while out and about.

Example: The price of regular gasoline at Mars Hill earlier this week was $1.81 per gallon. On the same day it was anywhere from five cents to 12 cents a gallon higher 150 miles south in Greater Bangor, and – here’s the kicker – as much as 17 cents higher per gallon at Searsport, home to an oil terminal that one would presume is a prime source of supply. What’s up with that?

In golfing lingo, the distance from the Searsport gas stations to the mother lode down at the tank farm is roughly a 3-wood, although you’d have to really nail it. Seven-iron if you’re Tiger Woods. By contrast, far as I can tell, the nearest supply source for the Mars Hill gas stations is about 175 miles and three hours of hard-driving time via tanker truck. Boys and girls, what is wrong with this picture? Not to queer the deal for the good burghers of Mars Hill, but – given the high cost of transportation we hear so much about as justification for normally higher gas prices in the outback – shouldn’t things be the other way around? Or is my logic illogical? (And if so, what else is new?)

In any case, the Old Dawg’s long-standing offer remains in effect: The first expert to unravel this mystery for me – to satisfactorily explain the “mitigating factors” that have conspired to create this strange lashup – gets a small Snickers candy bar.

If he can also disabuse me of the nagging suspicion that somewhere there is a little boardroom hanky-panky afoot I might even spring for a couple of the treats, being a Big Spender and all.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net