Small Business Resources, Business Advice and Forms from AllBusiness.com

Appendix E: Northeast Heating Oil Reserve.

On July 10, 2000, President Clinton directed the Department of Energy to establish the Northeast Heating Oil Reserve. The reserve is intended to reduce the risks presented by home heating oil shortages, such as the ones experienced in December 1996 and January-February 2000.

Maximum

inventory of heating oil in the reserve will be two million barrels. The Department of Energy believes that a two-million-barrel reserve will provide relief from weather-related shortages for approximately ten days, which is the time for ships to bring heating oil from the Gulf of Mexico to New York Harbor. Inventory for the reserve was acquired by exchanging crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for heating oil to be delivered to the storage facilities.

For more information on the Northeast Heating Oil Reserve, please contactMr. Nathan Harvey from the Office of Petroleum Reserves at (202) 586-4734.

Northeast Heating Oil Reserve inventories classified as "Distillate Fuel Oil--Greater than 0.05 percent sulfur" are not considered to be in the commercial sector and therefore are excluded from distillate fuel oil supply and disposition statistics in Energy Information Administration publications, such as the Weekly Petroleum Status Report, Petroleum Supply Monthly, and the Distillate Watch.

Northeast Heating Oil Reserve

(Thousand Barrels)

                                               Week Ending
Terminal Operator             Location      September 17, 2004

First Reserve Terminal     Woodbridge, NJ         1,000
Williams Energy Services   New Haven, CT            500
Motiva Enterprises LLC     New Haven, CT            250
Motiva Enterprises LLC     Providence, RI           250

Total                                             2,000

Source: Energy Information Administration.

In addition, make sure to read these articles: