But look again at that chart.  It’s a six month chart, and it shows that oil has gone (and let’s count…) Up, Down, Up, Down, Up, Down, Up, and finally Down again.  Wasn’t that fun?

Why has the price fallen so fast?  There are four domino’s to this one.

The first domino to every financial question these days is “Europe,” and our market is no different.  The economies of Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy don’t raise enough in taxes to cover their public expenditures, and their taxpayers aren’t willing to pay more because it would hurt too much.  This is wreaking havoc on all the markets.

The second domino, and what tipped the scales two weeks ago, was Italy’s failure to pass a viable plan to live within its means.  This not only looks bad for Italy, but for all of Europe because Italy is such a big economy.  Will the “Euro” survive as a unit of currency if Italy defaults on its debts?

The third domino then, is profound doubts about the Euro’s stability.  Investors are not just frightened by the Euro, they’re terrified.  And they rushed to move their money to bonds backed by the US Dollar.

The fourth domino, as you will remember from previous posts to this blog, involves the inverse relationship between the Dollar and the price of Oil:  When the Dollar goes up, Oil goes down.  In the past I have argued that the dollar was getting weaker because of our own government’s inability to live within their means.  This hasn’t changed.  It’s just that the dollar is the lesser of two evils!

OK, so what will oil do next?  (Greek Chorus:  Will he try to weasel out of this question?)

You bet I will!  But here are the forces at work in the broadest dynamic:

1. If Europe continues to fall apart financially and politically, the dollar will continue to strengthen, and oil will continue to fall.  [If not, oil will rise.]

2. If the US economy posts a strong December holiday shopping season, it will be seen as a harbinger of future US economic growth, which will cause oil to rise (more demand).  [If not, oil will fall.]

And the dynamic gets even stranger when we combine these factors.  A failing Europe would make America look good, but a double-dip recession at the same time could severely tarnish that image.  In that case, investors would invest in commodities, and oil would spike up!

Alas, there’s no way to guess the market.  The wisest path is to look to the efficiency of your home, put a Price Cap on your oil or propane, and know that you’ve protected yourself as much as possible.

At the end of the day we can always come up with a good explanation for what just happened in the rear view mirror, and we can never predict what will happen tomorrow.  But we sure have fun trying!

The market was up a little more than four cents today, but analysts think it was just “catching its breath,” and it will probably keep going down for at least a couple more days (see chart of the December Heating Oil Futures Contract):

customers with Propane generators as their tanks run down.  But the drivers have been downright heroic.  It’s dark when they pull out of our yard in the morning.  It’s dark when the oil drivers

and technicians go home around 5:00 PM.  And it’s still dark as they drive around tree limbs and power wires for the next four hours.

It has been an interesting test of our infrastructure:  Can we deliver to all the propane tanks running generators if the entire county goes down for three or more days?

The answer turns out to be “Yes,” although it’s a rather tired, wheezing “Yes.”

Next week we’ll get caught up on all the non-emergencies

More news about our service:

Thanks Bantam Fuel

Open for Business

Well, those guys told a really good story about how mainframe computers couldn’t be programmed to handle four-digit dates, so they would get all confused when the year “00” succeeded the year “99”, and they would freeze up and stop working.  Little companies were supposed to be OK because they had little computers, but big companies would fall like giants:  Banks, governments, the military, and worst of all the electric company!

Perhaps it’s just that the media loves a good scare, but they played it to the hilt, and the commercial bank who handled our business at the time really drank the Kool-Aid:  “If you guys at Bantam Fuel don’t install a backup generator, we won’t renew your loan in the summer of 1999.”  Really?  Yeah, really.

So my father and I gritted our teeth and spent about $28,000 on two huge generators, one for the office, and one for the gas station in Litchfield (now the “Bantam Fuel Mart”).  Did the power go out for three weeks on January 1^st, 2000?  Let’s not even go there… my teeth still hurt from the gritting.

But now and then the power does go out for a few hours, or even a whole day, and those stupid generators are very nice to have.  So I wasn’t surprised to see cars lined up in the road on Monday morning to get gasoline.

Even so, I was shocked when I stepped inside.  There must have been 30 people lined up like zombies for a turn at the coffee station.  These people were in desperate need of a caffeine fix, and I would have called Drug Enforcement if I hadn’t been one of them.

Apparently Dunkin Donuts and the other two gas stations had no power, and the Common Ground closed a month before (which we had absolutely nothing to do with… it was a great business).  Someone in line was tweeting to his friends that the Bantam Fuel Mart had hot coffee.  To be “tweeted” about gave me a feeling of being important and ridiculous at the same time.

So, was the generator at the gas station a wise investment after all?  Let’s see:  $28,000 divided by 35 cents profit on a cup of coffee…

80% of those calls were unnecessary, but we had to take them seriously because we never really know until someone reads the gauge or until we make the delivery.  And that brings me to the future of fuel delivery!

Scheduling fuel deliveries hasn’t really changed much in the past 75 years.  We keep track of how cold it has been, and we plot that against a home’s historical pattern to predict when it will need fuel.  This “Degree Day” system works great for heating buildings, but it’s worthless at predicting fuel used for a generator.  It’s also useless for predicting fuel for pool heaters, commercial kitchens, and other irregular uses.

And that is why we made deliveries all day Sunday and Monday of Hurricane Irene… because we just didn’t know what was in those tanks.  Got it?  OK… now are you ready for the future?

In the future (which should be within the next nine months), we will fit a little tiny device onto the tank, which will measure how much fuel is in it, and send that information out over the internet to our office… How cool is that???

Not only will we make far fewer deliveries based on fear and anxiety, but we can virtually guarantee that those tanks will never run out.  The technology will also appeal to people with second homes, and even those of us with only one home but who don’t have a fanatical faith in the 75 year old Degree Day system!

[I should repeat here that the good old Degree Day system is remarkably accurate for predicting heat needs… just not so good at anything else.]

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned the wonders of remote tank monitoring, but it’s special now because we finally converted our 20 year old computer system to a brand, spanking new software “platform” that can handle remote monitoring with ease.  It’s just a matter of time now.

It’s Friday afternoon and the oil markets are just closing… 12 cents up in the last 24 hours.  Once a year I gather up all the facts about the oil market and condense it down for our readers, and today appears to be a better day than most!  But I’ll be short and to the point, don’t worry.

The price of oil is chillingly high, with retail oil exceeding $4.00 per gallon.  What factors explain it?  It isn’t explained by greedy fat cats with cigars, or by an evil, manipulative government.

 It’s explained by the supply and demand for energy, the state of the American economy, the miserable state of the US Dollar, the flight of investment dollars to commodities, explosive revolutions in seven countries at once, and an American energy policy that can only be described as insane.

 I know you don’t think I can be short and to the point, so I’m going to prove it:

Supply and Demand for Energy: The US is no longer the size of the rest of the world’s economy combined.  In fact, we represent an ever shrinking slice of that pie.  So the fact that we are still in a recession doesn’t mean the demand for oil has fallen significantly.  Other countries are experiencing economic growth, which uses energy for construction, transportation, manufacturing, etc.  In short, demand is still strong, while supply remains unchanged, which causes prices to climb.

The State of the American Economy:  The US economy is still in recession, whatever we may read in the paper.  We still have record high unemployment, record low property values, record high business failures, and empty storefronts in every town across the country.  But we are slowly coming out of recession, which means demand will soon increase (construction, transportation, manufacturing, etc.).  Since energy supply is pretty much a constant, it doesn’t take a genius to see the pinch coming.  That anticipation causes today’s energy prices to climb.

The Miserable State of the US Dollar:  Remember when you could go to Mexico on vacation and live like a king for $50 a day?  That was because of the relative strength of the Dollar vs. the Peso.  Currencies are strong when their underlying economies are strong.  When the US economy crashed in 2007 – 2008, the dollar lost value because the economy lost value.

When we printed trillions more dollars and poured them into the system to keep our economy going, that was like pouring a half cup of boiling water into your coffee cup… it’s still coffee, but it’s a lot weaker.  When we try to buy foreign oil with that weak cup of coffee called the US Dollar, guess what?  It doesn’t go as far.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t have printed the money, but it certainly caused energy prices to climb.

The Flight of Investment Dollars to Commodities:  It isn’t just oil.  Wheat, corn, and soybean prices are up over 90%.  That’s because the stock market appears very risky to investors after the crash of 2008, so the typical investment mix now includes up to 20% in commodities.  That infusion of money – from every retirement fund, every pension plan, and every hedge fund – has inflated the price of oil… some say by as much as $2.00 per gallon.

And with that much money in play, investors have found ways to game the system, which makes profits on Wall Street while inflating commodity prices even more.  We’ve been lobbying the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to close speculative loopholes, but they’ve been slow to act.  Investment in commodities and speculative loopholes have both caused energy prices to climb.

Explosive Revolutions in Seven Countries at Once:  I don’t really think this needs explaining.  After all, these countries aren’t in Antarctica, they’re in the Middle East.  Oil fields are part of the battle ground.  Even countries that have kept their revolutionaries quiet, like Saudi Arabia, are terrified that they’ll be next.  The instability alone (if you can call armed revolution “instability”) has caused energy prices to climb.

An American Energy Policy that can Only be Described as Insane:  This is tricky, but I promised to be brief.  The stated energy policy of our nation is to shift away from traditional energy sources and toward renewable fuels for environmental reasons.  But all large scale energy production has environmental impact:

• Coal makes smoke (albeit a lot less than it used to) and despoils the land in the mining process.

• Oil requires drilling, which can go horribly wrong once in a while, such as last year’s debacle in the Gulf.

• Natural Gas leaks Greenhouse Gases far more than people know (big cover-up), and recovering it from shale deposits destroys watersheds.

• Nuclear power has some inherent safety risks, and we can’t agree on what to do with the waste.

• Tidal power entails huge and intrusive float farms that make the coast inaccessible to boats and ruins the look of the shore.

• Windmills are only “pretty” if you drink the Kool-Aid and ignore the fact that they don’t generate enough energy to pay for themselves without huge taxpayer subsidies… otherwise they’re far more intrusive than cell towers, which it is fashionable to despise despite their undeniable utility.

• Solar hardly works at all north of the Mason-Dixon line, and it also takes up tremendous space and requires taxpayer subsidies to be viable.

Shifting to these “alternative” energies will cost the taxpayer in every scenario, and we’re in a recession with a budget crisis.  More to our point, the President announced last week that he wants to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by a third within ten years.  At the same time he agreed to help fund Brazil’s development of their offshore oil reserves, saying “We want to be one of your best customers.”

This announcement struck the energy market as being schizophrenic.  It also guarantees we will pay higher energy costs in the future because there is absolutely no way to make up 1/3 of our imported energy with windmills, solar panels, and tidal power.  Instead, we refuse to allow our own citizens to develop oil reserves, pay others to develop theirs, and then pay them for the oil.

I know this may not be intuitive to many people, but the mere announcement of our future dependency causes the price of oil to rise.  Conversely, an announcement that we will open up our own proven reserves to drilling would cause oil prices to collapse.  That’s right, all it would take is the announcement of a sane energy policy in which we agree to grant Americans access to our own proven reserves, which amount to more than 100 years of oil alone.

What can we do about these high energy prices?

On a macro level, we can hope the revolutions in the Near East settle down quickly.  We can hope the government institutes an energy policy which embraces the domestic fuels at our disposal that are available without taxpayer subsidies.  And we can lobby our members of congress for financial market reform.

On a local level, I would suggest getting a Price Cap on fuel for the next year.  Available on both oil and propane, a Price Cap protects you from a rising market, and also gives you the benefit of a falling price in a falling market.  The premium for a Cap is less than 10% of your annual energy bill, which makes it cheap insurance.

It’s also useful to note that all Bantam Fuel’s heating oil contains 5% BioDiesel, making it the cleanest, most renewable heating oil in Western Connecticut.

Finally, it pays to have an expert review your heating system and see if you can save money by upgrading to a high efficiency solution.  All but the newest systems are good candidates for this.

Today the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a press release alerting the public to a potential safety hazard: Some propane shipped to Connecticut in early 2010 may have been inadequately odorized.

The local TV station will run reports on how dangerous propane can be, and consumers will be encouraged to regard their propane tanks as they would armed terrorists.  Business as usual on a slow news day.

Even though the State Fire Marshal’s Office conducted a lengthy investigation and found it unlikely that any poorly odorized propane ever reached Connecticut, we are told this warning goes out “in an abundance of caution.”

Really?  The last time any improperly odorized propane could possibly have reached a consumer was September, 2010.  Four months later is “an abundance of caution?”  After much thought, I find this announcement offensive.

There is, indeed, an abundance of caution, but it has nothing to do with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a press release, or a consumer hotline.

It seems the CPSC assumes that we never thought to check if our propane is properly odorized.  In the propane industry we are well aware of the fact that delivering gas isn’t the same as, say, delivering bark-mulch.

Safety isn’t just an afterthought… it’s what we sell.

We test our propane for proper Odorization three different times:

* When it is delivered to our facility
* When our drivers load their trucks
* When we deliver it to each customer’s tank

If we had ever received un-odorized propane, we would know it.  And yet the CPSC is basically saying: “Perhaps your propane company didn’t notice their propane had no odorant last summer.”  This is like saying: “Perhaps your ice cream store didn’t notice their freezer didn’t work last summer.”

Perhaps the CPSC didn’t notice that almost a year has gone by since this supposed incident began, and not one state fire marshal’s office from Maryland to Maine has confirmed a single finding of un-odorized propane!

Perhaps the CPSC didn’t notice how big a rail-car is:  If one had been full of un-odorized propane (32,000 gallons), it would already have been tested thousands of times, once for every delivery.

An abundance of caution?  Perhaps people won’t notice the irony.

Over the years, I’ve used plumbers at my houses and my business, and I’ve helped arrange for plumbers to take care of customers who needed work we couldn’t provide. The big plumbing outfits often seemed impersonal and expensive, and the little guys didn’t always respond promptly or were too busy to get to a job in a reasonable timeframe (or they were really scary…)

One of the bright spots in my plumbing experience has been Rick O’Dell who has run O’Dell’s Plumbing & Heating in Morris since he took over the business from his father almost 30 years ago.  Rick always called us back the same day, and he never said he was too busy to take care of us.  When my wife worked with him on a bathroom in our old house, she was comfortable that he understood exactly what she wanted, and how she wanted it done.

Rick and I were chatting recently about what our futures looked like, and I immediately realized that this was someone who shares our business values.  The conversation naturally turned to how we might join forces and offer an improved service to even more people.  Four months later, Rick has formally joined the Bantam Fuel team and now we can offer full plumbing services as well as heating, cooling, and gas piping.

Why do I think we can improve on a plumbing business we already love?  Because we do the “business” aspect really well: We answer phones professionally, schedule work quickly and accurately, purchase inventory wisely, generate clear invoices, handle billing questions in a friendly manner, etc.

Rick will also train our other technicians to work on what we call “domestic” plumbing systems (we already work on the “heating” side of the plumbing in your house).  So we’ll have several people capable of handling the simple jobs, and lots of help for Rick on the big ones.

The list of plumbing jobs we can do is endless now that Rick is on our team.  But the obvious categories are:

• Water conditioning systems
• Kitchen & Bath remodels
• Frozen pipe repairs, & weatherization
• Sump pumps
• Faucets, sinks, toilets, tubs & showers

For years we have said to customers: “I’m really sorry, but we don’t do plumbing.”

Now, finally, we get to say: “Yes indeed, we do plumbing… How can we help you?”

Licence # p1 0203147

You can tell a lot about a fuel company’s character by the price they quote over the phone.  Think of it this way:  Is the quoted price a subtle deceit, or are they lying through their teeth?

Fuel companies will do almost anything to get a new customer.  Many years ago the classic giveaway was a free Service Contract.  Then when prices began to skyrocket a few years ago, homeowners became more afraid of the fuel price than repair costs.  So the giveaway became a low price on the first delivery.

But people aren’t stupid, and they learned to look past the “New Customer” price and ask what the regular, going rate was.  And many companies responded with more layers of deceit.

Now the deceit has become even more insidious.  There are three types of price dishonesty:  Seasonal Dishonesty, First Delivery Dishonesty, and Gradually Declining Dishonesty.

“Seasonal Dishonesty” is what I call it when a fuel company lowers their profit margin right down to break-even, or sometimes a loss, from May through mid-October.   The theory is that they only sell 15% of their fuel during the summer months, and that’s when most customers switch companies, so why not take a loss for that thin slice of business and then jack up the prices during the winter?

The dishonesty is in the implication that their price is always low.  They bank on the fact that people research prices and levels of service thoroughly in the summer and then never check again.  Some people never do check again, and believe they have a great price, which proves the old adage “Ignorance is bliss.”  Others have a rude awakening when they check prices in January and find they’re paying full price.

“First Delivery Dishonesty” is what I call it when a fuel company quotes a low price to a potential customer whenever they get a call.  “Is that really your price?”  “Yes, that’s really our price.”  They say this without the heavens unleashing a thunderbolt at their office because it’s true, in a way:  It really is their price to potential new customers, that day.

There’s a very good, old, full service fuel company in our area who does this all the time.  Last week the difference between new customer quote and old customer invoice was 60 cents per gallon!  Again, they figure customers won’t check prices again after making the decision to switch companies.  I’m not sure how they explain (to the few who do) that oil prices went up 60 cents a gallon in two months, but someone must be a smooth talker.

“Gradually Declining Dishonesty” is a variation on First Delivery Dishonesty.  In this case the second delivery is still at a discounted price, but the discount is not that big.  The third delivery is still discounted, but now it’s only 20 cents.  Etc.  By the time the customer gets a full priced delivery, several months have elapsed and the customer has stopped checking around.

So, what’s wrong with these schemes?  Why not pick up new customers this way?  Doesn’t the customer benefit from steep discounts for at least a couple of deliveries, and isn’t he better off than if he hadn’t received the discounts?

The problem is that these schemes violate people’s trust.  A homeowner does some research and selects a fuel provider based on reputation, competence, fuel quality, friendliness, and of course price.  And price is a very significant factor.  By lying about the price, they have basically swindled the consumer.

Trust in this business is more important than in most:  I trust my fuel company to not endanger my family with that roaring fire in the basement, to not let my pipes freeze up, to respect my home when working on thermostats and radiators in the bedrooms, to be honest about gallons delivered, etc.  Every facet of the relationship involves trust.

When a company deceives you about its price, they violate your trust in all these things.

That’s why Price Dishonesty is not OK.  Because if you can’t trust someone, well, that’s the end of that, isn’t it?

Propane just went up by almost 10 cents per gallon, and the story is surprisingly interesting.  It also goes a long way toward explaining the strange life-cycle of propane, from refineries to our tanks.

First, we all read about how they found “insufficiently odorized” propane in Massachusetts after the explosion at a construction project that killed one worker.  It turns out that propane originating in Illinois was sent out to at least 12 states with no odorant.  No one knows why it happened yet… equipment failure, human error?

Propane has no natural odor.  The refiners add a foul-smelling chemical called “Ethyl Mercaptan” to make it stink like rotten eggs so we can detect a leak.  The really clever thing about Ethyl Mercaptan is that it has no smell when burned:  It’s completely odorless when you’re cooking, but smells to high heaven when there’s a leak.  (That chemist should have received a Nobel prize…)

All this “insufficiently odorized” propane was shipped across country in rail cars, and much of it ended up at the rail terminal in Westfield, Massachusetts.  Big propane trucks (the ones you see on the highway) loaded up at Westfield and delivered into the storage tanks of area propane companies.  One of those companies delivered the propane to a construction project, and a leak went undetected.  The rest is history.

OK, here comes the interesting part. The Massachusetts Fire Marshal’s office shut down the Westfield, Mass rail terminal while they conducted an investigation.  It has now been shut down for almost two weeks, and there are 55 rail cars full of propane sitting idle on the tracks.  The propane in these cars has been tested and proven to be properly odorized, but they still won’t let the cars unload.

That creates three problems for Connecticut:

• There is almost 2 million gallons of propane held hostage in those rail cars and no one can get at it.

• No new propane is being shipped to Westfield, Mass, and that’s a crucial supply point for this general area.  The next nearest supply point is almost 60 miles away.

• Albany, NY (on the same rail line) is now so congested with the trucks from Westfield that the big trucks are waiting in line for over 5 hours for their turn to load.

If that were all there is to the story, it would still explain a slight price rise.  But there’s much more.  Most of the propane used by Eastern Connecticut comes from the shipping terminal in Providence, RI.  But they have no propane left, and no ship coming in for a few more weeks.  (It sounds more like an 18^th century industrial problem than a 21^st century one, doesn’t it?)

That, in turn, creates additional demand on the remaining points of supply:  Albany, NY, Newington, NH (another shipping terminal), and Selkirk, NY (a pipeline terminal).

But wait, there’s more… the pipeline bringing propane from Mont Belvieu, TX up to Selkirk, NY “experienced a rupture.”  That’s Public-Relations-Speak for “It blew up.”

With Westfield, Mass shut down, Providence, RI dry, and Selkirk, NY, um, “ruptured,” we have the perfect storm for propane supply in New England.  Last week we sent trucks as far as New Hampshire, Western New York (Watkins Glen), and Philadelphia, PA.

The Massachusetts Fire Marshal’s Office should release the 55 sequestered rail cars at Westfield by the end of this week… hopefully.  A ship should finally arrive at the shipping terminal in Providence within two weeks.  And the pipeline at Selkirk, NY will probably remain closed until early November.  Until then the price of propane will continue to reflect more demand than supply, and dramatically increased shipping costs.

To recap, propane arrives in Connecticut primarily by truck.  Those trucks bring it from railway terminals, shipping terminals, and pipeline terminals.  One of each kind of terminal is presently not operating, which is causing a significant strain on the remaining infrastructure.  Bantam Fuel has plenty of propane, and plenty of ability to resupply our storage tanks as we deliver to our customers.

But until these issues get resolved, the propane industry is pacing their Widow’s Walk, waiting for their ship to come in.

The BP oil leak isn’t just a disaster, it’s shameful.  Their oil well wasn’t designed with the multiple heads considered standard safety procedure by other big oil companies, they had no plan for handling an ocean floor leak, and their CEO is yachting, Nero-like, while the ocean burns… literally.

In general I am pro-oil.  But there’s a difference between supporting the world’s dominant, low cost energy source, and supporting a company whose irresponsible cost-cutting measures have now seriously damaged our fragile environment.

We could perhaps have forgiven them if they showed some contrition, some humility, and a round-the-clock obsession with the relief efforts (especially on the part of the top brass).  Instead we got cool confidence bordering on arrogance, and an arm’s length disinterest from Tony Hayward.

As consumers of heating oil, do we have any shared liability for this disaster?  The thought crossed my mind in a philosophical way, but it’s clear to me the answer is “No.”  In fact, we are part of the solution, not the problem.  Especially Bantam Fuel customers.

How?  First of all, every Bantam Fuel customer uses less oil than an identical customer at another company, because 5% or our heating oil is a renewable biofuel.  That’s pretty huge.  And remember that we’re not talking about ethanol, which was recently described as “the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American public.”  This is biodiesel, made from soy, rapeseed, jatropha, and sunflower.

The BP incident highlights the moral component of energy conservation:  When we “save money” by upgrading to a high efficiency water heater, for example, it’s because we’re saving fuel.  And saving fuel, in turn, means less fuel consumed, less exploration, less refining, less transportation… less environmental impact.  (It doesn’t hurt that a new water heater improves our comfort!)

Here’s another way to look at the moral equation:  Oil isn’t bad… waste is bad.  It’s irresponsible.  When we encourage people to be green, we’re not suggesting they spend more money just to be green.  On the contrary, we’re suggesting they be green by saving money.  “High efficiency” is that magic place where thrift meets comfort, and that means wasting less and enjoying more comfort at the same time.

In the final analysis, BP’s Tony Hayward and his advisors have shown that they don’t care deeply for the environment, despite their rhetoric.  And that’s probably because they don’t feel a personal connection with Florida or Louisiana.  One has to wonder if they would have cut corners on offshore drilling near the coast of England.

As consumers on a local level, we’re part of the solution because we can’t afford to abandon (or sell out) our CT environment.  We’re deeply imbedded in the community.  When I consider the 42 people and their families who comprise Bantam Fuel, I see soccer coaches and soccer moms, volunteer firemen and church committee members, PTA members and 6:00 AM runners.

We recently made a major investment in protecting the environment here in Litchfield County:  We upgraded our fuel storage facility in Bantam to comply with the newest environmental standards set by the EPA, making us one of the few sites in Western Connecticut to be fully compliant.  That’s being part of the solution.  I find that truly local people always have a higher standard of care for our environment.

Waiting around for BP and the US government to fix the problem in the Gulf is an exercise in frustration.  It feels better to take some sort of action ourselves.  The actions we can all take are to use less fuel, use a renewable fuel (bioheat), conserve, recycle, and know that, unlike BP, you’re doing everything possible.