01/24/06 Some "fuel" for thought

Farm and Ranch January 24, 2006 Farmers and ranchers attending a seminar the recent Pacific Northwest Farm Forum in Spokane got some advice regarding diesel. Koll: "We are probably going to see a duplicate of last year less Katrina, which meant real tight diesel and gasoline supplies. My recommendation is buy more storage and fill up now." That's Bill Koll, an energy representative for Cenex Harvest States who covers all of Idaho and the eastern portions of Oregon and Washington. Koll: "If I had to take a guess prices will increase throughout the spring and summer. I think the smart person today is buying more storage and filling'em up." Koll says if you are getting 50 fuel deliveries every year you don't have enough storage. If it is once a month you have plenty of storage. Koll: "And that does not include for harvest. All bets are off for harvest time. But if you are depending on your fuel supplier to keep you full all the time that takes a lot of time and energy for your supplier to do that, I think you need to talk to your supplier and say what can we do together to decrease my delivery cost of fuel and that would be increasing your tank size and decreasing the number of deliveries." Koll says supply and demand are virtually equal and there is not much room for error in the system. Koll: "Any little tweak in the market. Any little bad news rocks the market and generally takes it up." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network