FuelClub Discount

Not long ago LA/Ontario International Airport was setting growth records. Airlines flocked to the Inland Empire airfield in what Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hailed as the “great first steps” to regionalizing air travel in Southern California.

In a much publicized event last year, the mayor even helped welcome the start of an airline’s service at Ontario by donning a safety vest and directing an ExpressJet plane to its gate.

Come September, ExpressJet will no longer operate at Ontario, becoming one of the latest casualties of high fuel costs and a souring economy, which have grounded airline service across the country. Other domestic airlines, such as United, Delta, Southwest and JetBlue Airways, have slashed or eliminated service at Ontario as well.

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U.S. airlines are cheering a steep decline in the price of jet fuel since mid-July, when crude oil began a nearly $27-per-barrel descent, but that good news may come with a slight sting for carriers that locked in fuel prices when oil was at its peak.

The risk is that oil may drift below the current price airlines guaranteed with hedging contracts, which are usually options. If that happens, the hedges carriers purchased could be a waste of money.

Worse yet, it is possible some airlines could be committed to paying more for their fuel than market prices.

“Given some of the hedging mechanisms they are using, they are going to be subject to significant losses on those portfolios. We’ve never seen such volatility on oil prices,” said Brian Nelson, equity analyst at Morningstar.

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The auto industry said federal regulators are pushing too far, too fast in their effort to raise fuel-mileage rules. The complaints from the industry, which had previously voiced support for tougher standards, underscore how economic hardship is affecting a major policy debate.

Auto makers are objecting to new rules being crafted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The rules would require car makers to achieve a fleet-wide average fuel efficiency of at least 31.6 miles per gallon for cars and trucks by 2015, up from about 25 mpg today. The rules are a first step toward Congress’s goal of achieving average fuel economy of at least 35 mpg by 2020.

The agency is expected to finalize the rules this year, after considering public input and analyzing confidential product-plan submissions from manufacturers.

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Energy companies are to be told to reallocate some of the £3bn they must spend to reduce carbon emissions towards directly helping the fuel poor, following uproar over last week’s decision by British Gas to hike gas bills by a third.

Amid widespread calls for a windfall tax on industry profits which could be used to ease the bills of the vulnerable, the government is working on compromise solutions intended to double companies’ spending on fuel poverty measures.

In a statement of priorities that will alarm climate change campaigners Malcolm Wicks, the energy minister, told The Observer: ‘If I said to an elderly woman I’m worried about global warming she would say “Chance would be a fine thing in my living room”. We are not going to sacrifice fuel poverty on the altar of climate change.’
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Construction workers say the rising cost of fuel is putting a strain on business.

Eddie Walls with JPD Construction out of Bossier City says, “Sometimes we bid a job and it may be 90 to a 150 days before the job physically starts when you’ve got diesel fuel that goes up like it has the last 90 days you just about losing money when you get started.”

Walls says high fuel prices is causing the cost of some of their supplies to go up as well. “This bedding rock that we use that goes in the sewer has sky rocketed. The asphalt that we’ll be putting down on this street has sky rocketed, it’s all tied to fuel.”
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Delta Air Lines’ much publicized Salt Lake City-to-Paris flight has run into unexpected turbulence since it was launched earlier this month.

At least twice since the the inaugural flight on June 3, the “nonstop” route has included stops in Cincinnati to take on additional fuel to make it across the big pond.

You can blame the one-stop affair on Utah’s hot weather, the popularity of the flight and technical difficulties that forced Delta to use Boeing 767-300 jumbo jets with different sized engines than would normally be used on the route.

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