Syria and home heating oil. [View all]

[Raven]

A good friend of mine and her husband own a home heating oil company here in NH. Each year around this time they offer a "pre-buy" to their customers. The lock in a price that they think will be the lowest for the heating season, buy a ton of oil and then offer it to their customers at that price. I generally pre-buy enough gallons to get me through the winter. This year the pre-buy price is $3.549 a gallon. I have not yet signed the pre-buy agreement and got a call this morning from my friend telling me that oil prices have suddenly gotten very volatile and they were alerting all their pre-buy customers. She said they were fairly certain that heating oil would go over $4 a gallon and that they would deplete their pre-buy supply very quickly. She said that most of the people in the oil business think the uncertainty about Syria is the cause for this. She said it has nothing to do with supply and demand. So Syria hits home...literally and anyone who thinks what happens in the Middle East doesn't effect all of us has their head up their ass.