This Editorial appears in the Aug. 27 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today. So here we are again, trapped in still another fuel-price spiral, as we helplessly watch outside events and parties set the cost and supply of the precious liquids that make our industry possible.
As reported in this week’s Transport Topics, the national average cost of a gallon of diesel has risen for seven straight weeks, after many welcome months of price declines.
In those seven weeks, the diesel average has jumped 37.8 cents and now stands at $4.026. On the slim chance that you’ve missed the significance of these increases, diesel now stands at 21.6 cents a gallon more than it cost a year ago.
Every week there’s a new excuse for the price increases: a pipeline leak here, a refinery fire there, a political burp in the Middle East or Korea or Iran. And the result is always the same — higher pump prices.
Still, the nation muddles along with no national fuel policy, no national freight policy and no real defenses against the market gyrations that stress our fleets and threaten our economy.
This wave of increases is coming just as diesel prices traditionally rise as refineries start to focus on home heating oil. The resultant tightening of distillate supplies usually pumps prices up as temperatures start to fall.
These higher fuel prices this year put an extra burden on the economy, which already was struggling to gain real traction. Rising diesel prices are the equivalent of adding weights to the ankles of a long-distance runner: You can still keep moving, but it’s a lot harder.
The growing importance of natural gas as a substitute fuel for fleets, as well as for other major fuel users such as power generators, presents us with an opportunity to finally have some leverage against the oil cartel that has maintained a stranglehold on the world.
With the appropriate political leadership, we can at least have counterbalance to the oil barons, even if we still can’t yet wean ourselves of needing their product.
But that means we need the administration and Congress to figure out how to work together long enough to establish a rational policy that maximizes the value of the vast reservoir of natural gas that is under our feet.
And that, unfortunately, is a valid concern. Political one-upmanship must take a back seat to national need. Let’s hope our representatives in Washington are up to the task.
