The front page of today’s Providence Journal features an article about home heating oil prices reaching an all-time high:

Another winter of expensive heating bills is coming, and for those who use heating oil, it is forecast to be the most costly ever.

While the price of heating oil is primarily determined by the global crude oil futures market, the simple law of supply and demand still applies. So if Providence looses a major home heating oil supply terminal like Sprague Energy to luxury condos, Rhode Island home heating oil customer could face even higher prices. And loosing even more storage capacity could led to dangerously low supplies of home heating oil should we face a serious stretch of cold weather.

Oil terminals and storage tanks might not be pretty, but they are absolutely essential for heating the 172,000 Rhode Island households who depend on home heating oil.