Fuel Oil

A half-mile stretch of the historic Manayunk Canal was polluted last night by several hundred gallons of industrial-weight fuel oil that authorities said posed a threat to fish and waterfowl. The cause of the spill, which was first reported to authorities about 6 p.m., was not immediately known. The clean-up operation, scheduled to begin last night, is expected to take several days. Battalion Chief William Doty, who directed the Fire Department's operation to contain the tarlike substance, said the No. 6 fuel oil apparently entered the canal near Leverington Avenue.

Heavy, industrial-grade fuel oil spilled into the Manayunk Canal last night not far from the city's water-intake unit for the Queen Lane Reservoir on the Schuylkill, but firefighters controlled the spill with a floating boom. The source of the spill of between 50 and 100 gallons of No. 5 or No. 6 fuel oil was unknown last night, but city water and fire department officials speculated the oil had been dumped deliberately. The oil, black and sludge-like in appearance, apparently seeped into the canal through a storm sewer outlet off Main Street near Leverington Avenue, said Fire Battalion Chief William Doty, who supervised the containment effort.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader yesterday opened the Philadelphia office of a new organization he says will harness consumer buying power and allow members to buy home heating oil at a 25 percent discount. By paying $15 a year to join the nonprofit Buyers Up group, Nader said, consumers could save as much as $200 a year on their heating costs by purchasing their fuel oil from one of two dealers who have agreed to sell at prices almost 20 cents a gallon less than the average price in the area.

A home-delivery fuel truck flipped onto its side yesterday on the Schuylkill Expressway near Girard Avenue, spilling about 100 gallons of fuel oil onto the roadway and shutting the westbound lanes of the Vine Street Extension and the expressway for several hours, police said. The driver, Alexander Cromarti, 34, of the 4800 block of North Marshall Street in Olney, was treated for minor injuries at Presbyterian-University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The Philadelphia School District is investigating whether it may have overpaid for the fuel oil it received last fiscal year to heat its buildings, school officials said yesterday. The investigation, which stems from an examination of why the savings goals of the school district's energy-conservation program were not being met, has led to the padlocking of a school office after contract documents were reported missing. The office belonged to William Jackson, who is in charge of school-building maintenance and operations.

For one month, Doloris Smith said yesterday, the 275-gallon heating-oil tank in the basement of her home in the city's Allegheny West section sat empty. She tried to get by, conserving her money to pay an outstanding water bill, a $300 electric bill, a $100 gas bill and two mortgage payments. She kept her gas oven at 300 degrees, ran two electric heaters and covered her sun porch with a big green cloth. Her daughter and three grandchildren wore sweaters. The situation was not a good one, but the family "got used to it," said one of the children, Luveater Smith, 6. Her brother, Kapus, 9, said, "I try not to think about it. I keep pulling covers all over me. " Finally, with Saturday's bitterly cold wind ripping through the air holes in windows and doors throughout her two-story rowhouse, Smith, 50, said she could wait no longer.

Two more heating-oil companies were named yesterday in a widening investigation of price-fixing in Bucks County's home heating-oil business. Pennsylvania Attorney General LeRoy S. Zimmerman yesterday filed suit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia charging seven fuel-oil companies and their principal executives with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act for conspiring to fix the price of home heating oil in lower Bucks County. The suit came a day after a federal grand jury indicted five heating-oil companies and 10 individuals on a felony charge of participating in the price- fixing scheme.

Several dozen gallons of fuel oil that spilled into a tributary of Beaver Creek in Guthriesville on Tuesday should have no noticeable effect on local aquatic life or drinking-water quality, officials said yesterday. "We feel pretty confident that there was no damage to anyone's water supply," Township Manager Scott Piersol said. "Crews responded almost immediately, and we were able to contain the majority of the oil within a half-mile of the spill. " Piersol said the oil spilled into the stream on Bondsville Road after a vent on a basement fuel-oil tank in the 1100 block of Horseshoe Pike failed.

Speedy action by various groups over the weekend prevented a fuel-oil leak from a corroded pipeline from spreading to contaminate the Brandywine Creek, nearby wells and other sources of drinking water in Chester County, officials said yesterday. John DeMarco, Upper Uwchlan's chief of police, said some hunters discovered oil near Little Conestoga Road and Shoreline Drive and reported the problem to authorities Saturday morning. Authorities estimated that less than 420 gallons (the equivalent of about 10 barrels)

Clyde A. Mauger Jr., 100, of Chadds Ford, owner of a fuel-oil firm in Chester County, died Saturday, Dec. 4, at his home. Mr. Mauger grew up in Delaware County and graduated from Glen-Nor High School. He studied business at Pennsylvania State University before becoming a dispatcher for Butler Oil Corp. in Southwest Philadelphia. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Force in North Africa and England. He was discharged as a captain and returned to Butler, eventually becoming a vice president.

Clyde A. Mauger III, 67, of Westtown, owner of a fuel oil firm in Chester County, died Monday, May 24, at Wilmington Hospital after suffering a heart attack. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Mauger graduated from Lansdowne-Aldan High School in 1961 and earned a bachelor's degree in business administration at Bethany College in West Virginia in 1965. Mr. Mauger joined the family business, Mauger & Co., founded in 1964 as a fuel oil supplier. The company added a heating and cooling division known as Mauger Mechanical and then another division, Cedar Brook Lawn Care.

Question: Last year, you wrote about what to do about black marks on roofs. You said it was algae that built up from the product used in the shingles, and you gave a remedy for cleaning it off the shingles. Well, I cut your article out for a spring project and, yep, you guessed it, now that spring is here, I cannot find the article. I wonder if you can tell me again how I can remove the unsightly black marks from my roof easily. Answer: Fiberglass asphalt shingles these days have a limestone filler instead of the traditional rag filler, and the limestone promotes the growth of algae that shows up in horrible streaks on roof areas that don't get much sun. Have your roofer nail copper or zinc strips on the peaks above these areas, so rain running over the strips will kill the algae.

Nearly 60 million gallons of fuel move through Buckeye Partners L.P.'s pipelines every day, but the Breinigsville, Pa., company doesn't own a drop. Instead of buying and selling fuel, Buckeye, like other pipeline companies, is paid to transport, store and load other companies' inventory onto trucks for delivery. But its planned purchase of Farm & Home Oil Co., a fuel distributor and marketer in Telford, for $145.5 million will dramatically change the way Buckeye does business by making it the owner of some of the fuel that courses its 5,400 miles of pipelines.

As a prelude to Earth Day, the price of crude oil - one of the planet's most critical resources - set a record yesterday, closing at more than $75 a barrel. Benchmark prices for crude oil have more than tripled since 2002, ending - at least for now - an era when consumers didn't have to give much thought to filling up and driving wherever they pleased. Theresa Pandola, who has a 45-mile round-trip between her home in Marlton and her job at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in West Philadelphia, said she was having a hard time adjusting.

The U.S. trade deficit rose to a record $68.5 billion in January, a result of increasing oil prices and Americans' appetite for Chinese clothing, French wine, Japanese cars and other imports. The nation's deficit in goods and services trade followed December's $65.1 billion shortfall, yesterday's Commerce Department report showed. Analysts had expected a January deficit of $66.5 billion, a Bloomberg News survey showed. January's increase in imports exceeded a rise in exports.

Question: With the price of fuel oil at $2 per gallon and the likelihood of increases this winter, I am wondering at what point electric heat becomes more economical. I have a rancher that is less than 1,000 square feet. We have been discussing putting electric baseboard heaters into our most used rooms, to supplement the oil furnace we have. Anyone we mention this to has flashbacks to when electricity was so expensive, but most people are comparing it with the old $1-per-gallon oil. My electricity costs haven't gone up in years.

A little oil spill from a sunken tanker wasn't going to keep Manuel Toja from casting his fishing nets into the Atlantic just before dawn off Spain's Coast of Death. But two hours later, his trawler was swept up in "a huge raft of oil," the 29-year-old captain said yesterday. "The whole sea was covered in fuel. We were panic-stricken. " Toja's contaminated catch - 175 pounds of fish - had to be thrown away. His trawler, coated in black slime, was able to pull into port. His experience - a mix of bravado, hope and despair - summed up the mood among residents of Spain's northwestern coast the day after an oil-laden tanker sank 150 miles offshore.

A crippled tanker carrying 20 million gallons of fuel oil split and sank in 12,000 feet of seething Atlantic water yesterday, raising the specter of an environmental disaster. The stormy conditions that broke up the tanker Prestige 150 miles off Spain's northwestern coast, as well as the thickness of the fuel oil and the extreme pressure on the ocean floor, threaten the worst spill in more than a decade, said the U.S. government's top oil-spill response official. About one million gallons of oil spilled when the Prestige broke in two, spawning an oil slick of about 2,200 square miles - about twice the size of Rhode Island.

The fuel-oil spill 150 miles off the coast of Spain could spell disaster for an island national park where marine birds make their nests and for a sensitive spawning and feeding area for 100 species of fish. That's the prediction from environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, which has sent experts to the scene to try to aid the growing numbers of sludge-caked birds and fish. The tanker Prestige, which split in two and sank yesterday in waters more than two miles deep, held more than 20 million gallons of fuel oil. Most of the oil remains with the tanker; about 2.5 million gallons has escaped so far, some of it washing ashore and putting thousands of fishermen temporarily out of work.