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a significant threat to the industry's continued growth." Under projected expansion, with the tax incentive in place, the indus- try is expected to support more than 74,000 jobs by 2015 and some $7.3 bil- lion in GDP. n NYACS opposes higher tobacco taxes in Governor Cuomo's proposed budget The New York As soc i a t ion of Convenience Stores is actively opposing changes in cigar and loose-tobacco taxes recommended by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his proposed state budget. In testimony prepared for a bud- get hearing held February 2 by the finance committees of the state leg- islature in Albany, NYACS President James Calvin said that while the budget document refers to them as "loophole closing actions," they would actually be tax increases with the following nega- tive consequences: Resulting higher prices would divert customers away from licensed, tax- collecting New York stores to easily accessible tax-free outlets. New York State would lose all the excise tax revenue—and the sales tax revenue—from those diverted transactions. The current state excise tax on • • cigars is 75 percent of wholesale value. Mr. Cuomo's budget would instead tax them at 50 percent of retail value, with the wholesale distributor pre-pay- ing a portion of that tax (20 cents per cigar) and the retailer remitting the balance—meaning another tax recon- ciliation to perform, and another tax return to file, periodically. Although the Budget Office says the change "is not anticipated to have an impact on the retail price of cigars," NYACS' analysis indicates that it would drive up retail prices, shrink retail profit margins, or both. Competing stores on Indian reservations and in neighboring Pennsylvania would be the beneficia- ries of New York cigar smokers fleeing tax-inflated retail prices. www.npnweb.com n NPN Magazine As for "loose tobacco," Mr. Cuomo proposes to change the state tax rate from 75 percent of the wholesale price to $4.53 per ounce, claiming this roughly equates to the excise tax rate of $4.35 a pack on finished cigarettes. The stated objective is to recapture cigarette tax revenue being lost to the new self-serve, roll-your-own cigarette craze in New York by eliminating the tax differential that is driving the pro- liferation of retail outlets selling cus- tomers low-tax "pipe tobacco" to load into their on-premise roll-your-own machine. However, Calvin said legitimate retailers of take-home pipe tobacco and chewing tobacco would suffer col- lateral damage, because the dramatic spike in price—precipitated by as much as a tenfold increase in tax—would chase those customers away to tax- free Indian reservations, Pennsylvania, and/or the black market. In asking legislators to reject the proposed tax changes, Calvin urged them to heed the lesson of cigarette tax evasion, which is now so pervasive that half the cigarettes consumed in New York are purchased without payment of any state tax whatsoever. This result- ed, he said, from New York State's short-sighted decisions to increase its cigarette excise tax by nearly 700 per- cent in the span of 10 years without closing off well-worn pathways for dodging that tax. n EIA: Regular expected to average $3.48 per gallon in 2012 The Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil to aver- age about $100 per barrel in 2012, $5 per barrel higher than the average price last year. The forecast is included in the EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook, released Jan. 10. For 2013, EIA expects WTI prices to continue to rise, reaching $106 per barrel in the fourth quarter of next year. EIA's forecast assumes that U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) grows by 1.8 percent in 2012 and 2.5 percent in 2013, while world real GDP (weighted by oil consumption) grows by 2.9 percent and 3.8 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively. EIA expects regular-grade motor gasoline retail prices to average $3.48 per gallon in 2012, 4 cents per gal- lon lower than last year, and $3.55 per gallon in 2013. During the April through September peak driving sea- son each year, prices are forecast to average about 5 cents per gallon high- er than the annual average. There is regional variation in the forecast, with average expected prices on the West Coast about 25 cents per gallon above the national average during the April through September period. n Biodiesel production breaks 1 billion gallon mark The U.S. biodiesel industry reached a key milestone by producing more than 1 bil- lion gallons of fuel in 2011, according to year-end numbers released by the EPA. The total volume of nearly 1.1 bil- lion gallons is by far a record for the industry and easily exceeded the 800 million gallon target required under the EPA's Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The previous record for biodie- sel production was about 690 million gallons in 2008. "We've been seeing a lot of stories about setbacks in the renewable energy sector recently, and I think our success in 2011 reflects the bigger picture real- ity, which is that strong energy policy is working to stimulate production of clean, American-made energy," said Anne Steckel, vice president of federal affairs for the National Biodiesel Board (NBB). INDUSTRY ANNOUNCEMENTS n 'Everything's On Go' with new Pilot Flying J Android app To kick off the New Year, Pilot Flying J has launched the Android version of its newly popular MyPilot smartphone application, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 7