Fuel Oil News

Fuel Oil News May 2016

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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24 MAY 2016 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com impairment insurance and warranty insurance. They see our quality program as being very important so we look at a lot of tanks. FON: What would you say is the state of the steel tank industry relative to petroleum today? I imagine your members were get- ting a lot of work with the fracking explosion, and that's probably slowed a bit. GEYER: That has slowed down considerably. Some of our members in North Dakota changed their shops over to building nothing but oil field tanks and they've reverted back to doing UL type aboveground or underground tanks. Industries like mining and things like that — they've slowed down, too. Then I'm hearing some of the big engineering firms are laying people off because there isn't that [much] work for the oil and gas industry or the mining industry. It's kind of a domino effect. Amongst our members are the people who make the big, heavy-wall pressurized vessels. Some of these go into refineries. In 2014 they were nine months out with their orders. They couldn't keep up. They were building new shops and—boom! I mean, it just fell off the table in 2015 and they've had to scale back. It's not been real pretty. FON: What about the industry more broadly? GEYER: Some of the guys who build the smaller shop-fabricated tanks are still doing pretty well. I mean, they're keeping busy. I've asked a mix of people. Some have been hit a little bit harder than others, so it's kind of hard to understand why there's that differentiation. FON: I've heard talk of a new AST market—high storage capacity generator fueling. Data centers and hospitals etc.—enough fuel to run for weeks at a time. GEYER: They're big tanks—50,000 gallons. They might put in four or five aboveground tanks. A 50,000 gallon tank used to be the biggest tank that would fit on a truck and that's like a 12' diameter by 60' long. It's a pretty big monster. 100,000th STi P3 tank.

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