Free Republic

The Rev. John L. Burton wasn't going to rely on divine intervention to keep his small church in Windham Center warm this winter. Doing his best to protect St. Paul's Episcopal Church from skyrocketing heating oil prices, he signed a contract in late summer with a local dealer to buy fuel oil at $4.67 a gallon for the coming heating season. By doing so, the congregation of 60 families committed to paying $5,000 more than last winter to heat its 175-year-old stone church. But with heating oil prices threatening to reach $5 a gallon by winter, Burton hoped to put...

Highlights Average household expenditures for all space-heating fuels are projected to be $1,137 this winter (October 1 to March 31), a 15-percent increase over the estimated $986 spent last winter. The largest increases will be in households using heating oil and natural gas. The projected increases primarily reflect higher prices, although colder weather than last winter will also contribute to higher fuel use in many areas. Strong global demand and low surplus production capacity contributed to the run-up to record crude oil prices in July. The current slowdown in economic growth is contributing to the recent decline in oil demand...

NEW YORK, June 6 (Reuters) - U.S. heating oil futures trading was halted briefly on the electronic trading platform CME Globex Friday after they struck the maximum fluctuation limit of 25 cents, a NYMEX spokeswoman said. "The trading on heating oil was halted at 1:13 p.m. EDT and resumed some three minutes or so later," said Anu Aluwahlia, the NYMEX spokeswoman. NYMEX trading on the floor was not affected, she said. Traders were confused and some said they did not even know that a trading halt had been imposed. Current rules on floor trading call for a trading halt for...

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s petition to Congress demanding the removal of government obstacles to increasing our energy supplies is gathering momentum by the minute, while the Democrats’ do-nothing Congress wants to raise fuel prices. Actually, labeling Congress a bunch of “do-nothings” is almost right, but not quite. They’re doing their best to create more obstacles to growing our energy supply. And while the price of energy is already unreasonably high, they’re working hard on a liberal agenda that will raise the prices consumers pay for gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas and home heating oil. With the summer upon us (and...

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - John F. Kennedy would no doubt be horrified to see his nephew self-righteously shilling for a tin-horn communist dictator like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. JFK was a liberal on most domestic issues, but on foreign policy, he was an ardent anti-communist. Countless movies and documentaries have been made about Kennedy's shining moment, the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was October 1962, when he forced Premier Nikita Khruschev to blink first and withdraw the Soviets’ nuclear-tipped missiles from Marxist dictator Fidel Castro’s Cuba, just 90 miles south of Florida. Today, there is nothing at all bright about the way...

NEW YORK (AP) — With his furnace sputtering its final gasps, Charles Comito decided it was time to trade in his heating oil system for natural gas this year. The switch cost $4,400, a price he says will be worthwhile in the chilly months ahead. "It was for the convenience and cost," said Comito, a 71-year-old resident of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., who lives in a three-bedroom ranch-style home. With oil topping $90 per barrel, some homeowners are weighing whether the price tag for switching to a natural gas furnace makes sense. The decision may depend on a variety of...

What you probably won't hear at the Live Earth concert: a call for higher taxes on gasoline and fuel. The current crop of US presidential candidates can only wish for the spotlight that will shine on Al Gore Saturday. He's the luminary for a globe-spanning, rock-star-studded, anti-global-warming concert called Live Earth. Most likely, though, his most radical idea won't get a mention. The former vice president (and almost president) wants to replace the current payroll tax with a consumer tax on fossil-fuel use. This "carbon tax" would, of course, raise the price of gasoline and home heating/cooling. And it would...

Punxsutawney Phil Was Wrong For the past several years, the first February edition of This Week In Petroleum (TWIP) issued after Groundhog Day has reflected on the energy market implications of the weather forecast that is, by tradition, based on Punxsutawney Phil’s ability to see his shadow on that fateful morning. This year, the famous rodent of Gobbler’s Knob did not see his shadow, which by legend, signals an early spring. However, residents of the many areas that continue to experience severe winter weather would undoubtedly take issue with that forecast and reach the unhappy conclusion that Punxsutawney Phil was...

(Kyodo) - North Korea has demanded it be provided with 1 million tons of fuel oil annually before it dismantles a nuclear facility and another 2 million tons annually after the dismantlement, a negotiation source said Sunday. The nation lodged the demand at the six-party talks on its nuclear programs being held in Beijing, the source said.

Understanding the Context Later tonight, the U.S. men’s soccer team will take on their Mexican counterpart. On the surface, the match is called a “friendly” in the soccer community, which means that it is not a qualification game that will determine if one country or the other advances in any international competition. However, when these two neighboring countries meet in any soccer game, the competition is intense, as each team wants to show its supremacy over the other, which is why both teams are recalling players who are playing on club teams overseas. Without understanding the underlying context for the...

A Shift in Momentum At some point during the Super Bowl this coming Sunday, it is likely that television analysts will talk about a shift in momentum from one team to the other. Whether it is the result of one key play or just a collection of several important plays, analysts will talk about how the shift in momentum might be just enough to push one team to victory. At the time, however, no one will be sure how long the momentum shift will last. A similar uncertainty currently exists in markets for oil and gasoline, the single most important...

2 per Gallon? Reports of gasoline selling for under $2 per gallon are starting to crop up, especially in the Midwest. As of this morning, AAA was showing the average price in Michigan as below $2.00 per gallon, with Missouri and Oklahoma right at $2.00 per gallon, and a few other states just a few pennies higher. According to AAA, many cities are averaging below $2 per gallon with prices in some cities close to $1.90 per gallon. Yet, with the latest U.S. average price at $2.23 as of January 15 (according to EIA’s weekly retail price survey), not everyone...

controversial gift of heating fuel from Venezuelan oil company Citgo is finally warming homes in rural Alaska. In Gambell, Jennifer Apatiki's husband hauled home a 55-gallon drum of free heating oil shortly after Christmas. The fuel, courtesy of Citgo, kept her warm in subzero temperatures in recent days. "It was a great way to start the new year," she said. As part of its program to donate heating fuel to poor Americans, Citgo, headquartered in Houston, Texas, pledged this year to give away 1 million gallons of heating fuel in Alaska Native villages. More than 11,000 homes are eligible for...

Call(ing) on OPEC As OPEC ministers gather in Nigeria on Thursday, December 14 to discuss whether they should cut production further, many people are voicing their opinions. Recently, both the U.S. Secretary of Energy and the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) called on OPEC to refrain from further cuts in production quotas. While the price of oil certainly plays a large part in OPEC’s decision making, the expected “call on OPEC crude oil” is another important factor that the ministers will consider. The “call on OPEC crude oil” is defined as the difference between the global demand...

Dubai: Dubai launched the Gulf region's first fuel oil futures contracts last month that could mark the beginning of the emirate's transformation into a new energy derivatives trading centre. The year-old Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange began trading the Fujairah 380 CST high sulphur fuel oil futures contracts on October 29 to add to its other products - gold, silver and currency futures. But until November 13, no contracts had been traded. "I think the energy market players are still gearing up for this. There is a lot of interest, people want to trade these contracts because of a lot...

Venezuela to sell D.C. oil at discount By Nicholas Kralev THE WASHINGTON TIMES November 2, 2006 Venezuela will provide heavily discounted heating oil to about 37,000 low-income families in Maryland, Virginia and the District this winter, Caracas' envoy to the United States said yesterday. The local jurisdictions are beneficiaries of a greatly expanded program that this winter will assist more than 400,000 families in 16 U.S. states and the District, up from eight states and 180,000 families last year, said Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera. Oil provided under the expanded program, first mentioned by President Hugo Chavez during a fiery speech...

The Ups and Downs of the Oil Market Much is made about the daily changes in the price of oil. Traders and analysts come up with many reasons why prices change from day-to-day. For example, when the near-month futures price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil rose by more than $2 per barrel on October 25, traders and analysts stated that the rise reflected a sharp drop in crude oil inventories relative to an expected build, along with a change in the perception of what impact recently announced OPEC production cuts might have on the market. Yet, less than...

SYKESVILLE - When James Schwartz signed a contract last summer locking in home heating oil for the winter at $2.79 a gallon, it seemed like a safe bet. Crude oil prices had surged and gasoline was above three bucks a gallon. Could $3 fuel oil be far behind? But crude has dropped nearly 25 percent from its mid-July peak of $78.40 a barrel. And other heating-oil customers in the Baltimore area are paying as little $2.12 a gallon to heat their homes - 24 percent less than Mr. Schwartz is paying. Nationally, retail home-heating oil prices averaged $2.39 for the...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Those not lucky enough to head south for the winter can take take solace in at least one bit of news: Winter heating bills for many Americans to be a lot lower. Bills for homes heating primarily with natural gas are expected to be about $119, or 13 percent, less this winter, the Energy Information Administration said. Special Reportfull coverage Big drop seen in winter heating bills Oil creeps above $60 EIA eyes stable oil flow, mild winter Gas tumbles, but don't get used to it EIA, the government agency that tracks energy statistics off all...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- In Alaska's native villages, the punishing winter cold is already penetrating the walls of the lightly insulated plywood homes, many of the villagers are desperately poor, and heating-oil prices are among the highest in the nation. And yet a few of the small communities want to refuse free heating oil from Venezuela, on the patriotic principle that no foreigner has the right to call their president "the devil." The heating oil is being offered by the petroleum company controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President Bush's nemesis. While scores of Alaska's Eskimo and Indian villages say...