Fuel Oil News

Fuel Oil News June 2014

The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding

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www.fueloilnews.com | FUEL OIL NEWS | JUNE 2014 23 market dynamics, so speculation is less of an issue. "Oddly enough, and they don't know it yet, the most likely allies are the agricul- ture guys," Cota said. "They were never deregulated and never had these crazy swaps. As part of the new rule coming out there's some uniformity in all of the hard commodities and oil is going to be re-regulated so that one person in the nearest traded month can't hold more than 200% of all that's available. As crazy as that sounds, that's an improvement. In the agriculture markets today, with some- thing like wheat, traditionally no person can hold more than 5% of the total avail- able market. What impact is that change going to make on those markets?" Nor can much of a push be expected from the Obama administration. While it is aggressively focused on healthcare and climate change initiatives, there seems to be little beyond lip service to follow through on the goals of Dodd-Frank. Collura credits Obama with forcing out CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton, an industry ally, in favor of Sharon Bowen a Wall Street securities lawyer whose outlook on the issues at hand is not yet clear. He further wonders if low oil prices are really a priority for an administration focused so aggressively on oil alternatives. Also at CFTC, industry champion Gary Gensler has left, and Obama nomi- nee Timothy Massad is another question mark as a replacement. J. Christopher Giancarlo has also been nominated on the Republican side and he has been critical of the CFTC's recent swap rule reforms. As this article goes to press Bowen, Massad and Giancarlo have received Senate com- mittee approval and are awaiting full Senate approval. Scott O'Malley, the Republican com- missioner, remains and is said to not be generally supportive of the indus- try's viewpoint. Mark P. Wetjen, who is a Democrat, also remains but he has tended to vote more sympathetically to the Wall Street side. "The question for us now is do we continue to commit the time and resources necessary to maintain the cohe- sion among our allies and continue fight- ing this? Or do we say we've got as far as we can and it's not as important spending resources on this issue compared to oth- ers that our industry is facing," Collura said. "That is one of the debates we're having internally. Not only us but the other partners involved in this fight. How much more time, money and person- nel are we willing to dedicate to this? Especially given the amount of resources the other side has to bring to the fight. There's a reason why the vast majority of our members have supported us spend- ing so much time and money fighting this. It's the right battle and we have gotten a lot out of it. And prior to that whenever prices were out of hand people fingered their dealer for price gouging. I think now the average consumer knows that these price swings have nothing to do with the person that sells them the prod- uct and they have a better understanding about the kind of factors that go into play further upstream." For all the challenges, the industry still has its most powerful weapon—heating oil dealers and marketers. "We cannot influence politicians through campaign donations, we cannot hire out armies of attorneys, we cannot pay for expansive PR campaigns through front groups to shove the messaging down the throats of the consumers but we have an army of hard-working, passionate, dedicated peo- ple who care about their consumers and want them to know what is really hap- pening," Collura said. "That is why we won last time, and if we are going to really make something happen here and pre- serve and strengthen our victory it's only going to happen through doubling down on that approach. We have to redouble our efforts, get the industry fired up and get them to talk to their customers and then we will be successful." Fuels Bart Chilton, a former industry champion at the CFTC l F O N

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