Dear Shale Protestor,

My apartment smells like a gasoline station. The fuel oil truck is making a delivery. Cold winter temperatures mean that the fumes released during the delivery accumulate at ground level near my apartment on the second floor. Cold winter temperatures also mean that my apartment building burns more fuel oil.  When it’s really cold, my building gets one tanker truck load every two weeks.

My building burns Number 6 fuel oil, also known as bunker fuel or resid or just plain old refinery bottoms.  Number 6 is what is left over after the more valuable cuts, like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, are refined out of crude oil. New York State burns 20% of the fuel oil that is used residentially in the United States, more than any other State in the country. The entire Northeast -- including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut -- burn 85% of the fuel oil used in the United States. This is a legacy system left over from the 1950s when America consumed domestic oil and prices were controlled by the government.

My building, which was built in 1907, originally burned coal.  Like many other buildings here in New York City, my building is a “pre-war," desirable because the design is classic and the construction is sturdy.  It has 55 apartments that are all heated with steam radiators.  The steam comes from a boiler, which was converted to fuel oil sometime after World War II.  Advances in catalytic cracking technology, which enabled the manufacture of high octane aviation fuel essential to the Allies war effort, fostered surging demand for gasoline after the war.

It was an efficient system when it was built. Fuel oil was essentially a waste stream leftover from refining gasoline. Burning it in ship boilers at sea, in electric utilities or in buildings seemed like a good way to get rid of it. Refiners priced it right, too, at only a few cents per gallon. But it’s not cheap or efficient anymore. Today crude oil costs $100/barrel and most of it is imported from other countries, including OPEC. In the winter a week’s worth of fuel oil costs my building $7500, which goes up or down depending on the latest foreign flare up.

My building is a good candidate for conversion to natural gas. However, that’s not going to happen easily or quickly despite abundant, cheap natural gas in the Northeast. New York City does not have enough capacity in the neighborhood natural gas distribution system to convert building heat from fuel oil to natural gas, and the grassroots support for such a system may never materialize. Shale protestors are making such a fuss about high volume hydraulic fracturing that many people are just avoiding natural gas altogether.

So here we sit. My building burns foreign oil because of a 50-year-old legacy system, which may never change because protestors think that oil and gas development will pollute water and ruin small towns. The last time the fumes were so overpowering in my apartment, the fill connection had a leak. The building never figured out how much leaked, or exactly where it went, but I guess it doesn’t matter because I get my water from the Catskills. It smells like the oil line is leaking again. 

Till Next Time,

Energy Mom
New York, New York