Burning fuel oil?

With a drop in the price of a barrel of oil, gas prices are going down (not as fast as they went up) but I got a letter from my fuel oil supplier yesterday. Gas was high at $4.25/gal. here, now down to $3.91. My oil supplier is willing to let me buy some oil at $4.79/gal if I sign up now AND prepay. If I agree to buy a minimum of 500 gallons, they graciously allowed me to pay $4.69. No. 2 fuel oils is not as refined as gasoling. What's up? BTW my wife's relatives in north Georgia just paid $2.35/gal.

Is it New York or my supplier?

Dan

We generally pre-pay every year, but recently, small oil companies have been going belly-up, leaving pre-purchasers out in the cold. We even lost one of the largest local dealer's last year. The state attorney general has stepped in to help folks get their money back, but it's a slow road.

Not sure if I'll be pre-purchasing this year or not.

That seems to be the going rate in NY. I'm locked in at $4.79 and my parents,who have been with the same company for 20 years are locked in at $4.59. That's the cheapest I've heard from anyone so far.

We usually do the budget program, pay every month for 10 months, adjust the monthly bill next year based on the amount/price this year. I haven't heard any offers from the company I've been with for 30 years about that program for this year.

Dan

I'm with Petro and they are still letting us do that. I got my first bill last week.

NY's fuel taxes are second only to CA. Suck it up and pay, baby.

curtis73 wrote: NY's fuel taxes are second only to CA. Suck it up and pay, baby.

Yeah, I don't get that. The oil companies do all the research, locate the dead dinosaurs, pluck it out of the ground, boil it down and get it to the consumers; for that they get paid with a bit of a profit.

What did ANY Government agency, organization or representative do to deserve a big slice of the pie?

WHY do they get any of it?

A spot on NPR about this today. They were talking about how the small shops are going out of business. They decide on what day to buy a $50k tanker of oil. They then have 10 days to pay that tanker off while the customers have payment plans and other ways to spread the cost. Also, with the price being so high, the customers may not be able to afford to buy the oil. In which case a supplier is stuck with a product people can't afford.

It's a rough deal all around.

Yeah... and Exxon's record $143 billion profits this year doesn't raise any eyebrows?

Out here where I live they are telling everyone either start using their wood burning fireplace or get one as oil will just kill us this winter. Last winter the oil tank got down to the point where we normally order more, went to order more and it was a good 3 weeks before they were able to get out to us. I said screw it and ended up cutting wood for the rest of winter (about 2 and a half months it was a long winter).

The nice thing about having a wood burning stove is I can still cook when the power is out. Had to do that a couple times this winter

Went to look at a house that we are thinking of purchasing in a town about 15 miles from where we presently live. It has oil heat (as does our current house). Dunno if heating with gas will save THAT much, but I called the gas company that handles that region to see if it could be piped into the new house. The customer service guy who answers puts me on hold to look up if a line is available. He comes back a few minutes later to inform me that yes, the town that I am inquiring about is within their territory, but they don't have any service there. WTF? I asked if there were any plans to have service in this town at some point. "No". WTFx2 Guess I'll be burning something else.

curtis73 wrote: Yeah... and Exxon's record $143 billion profits this year doesn't raise any eyebrows?

Come on now, you can't prove the increase in price of fuel has any correlation to the profits of the oil companies...

/sarcasm off

I'm assuming you're using the fuel oil to power some sort of cooling device?

914Driver wrote: Yeah, I don't get that. The oil companies do all the research, locate the dead dinosaurs, pluck it out of the ground, boil it down and get it to the consumers; for that they get paid with a bit of a profit.

That's like saying there's a bit of space in the universe

But yeah fuel taxes in general are uncalled for. Governments see money changing hands and they want a piece, they go after big exchanges first. Also fuel prices hurt economies SO much, they'd probably collect more taxes on other things if they just removed the fuel tax.