Editorial: A Short War and a Long Spring

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img src="/sites/default/files/images/articles/printeditiontag_new.gif" width=120 align=right>Here comes spring and here comes war. With a little luck, they may combine to relieve some of the pressure on diesel fuel prices.

Warming weather should have a role in lowering demand for petroleum distillates in the United States, according to analysts, and in a very tight supply market, every little bit helps. The stuff that runs our trucks — No. 2 fuel oil — also heats millions of homes.

Besides the first day of spring, last week also brought the opening phase of the armed campaign to liberate Iraq. The beginning of hostilities seemed to break a building tension. At last, the great enterprise was under way, and the action may have quelled some of the uncertainty that has driven the oil market to record price levels.

Even before the first cruise missiles struck near Baghdad, the average pump price of diesel stepped back from its long run-up to new heights. Last week’s decline of 1.9 cents from a peak of $1.771 per gallon was a step in the right direction. (Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of gasoline, which rose 1.6 cents to its all-time high of $1.728 for regular unleaded.)

On the eve of war, OPEC committed to making up any shortfall of oil that may be caused by war in Iraq, and that had to help.

Those were good signs for our industry. Trucking, however, is not out of the woods yet. The United States and its allies are still in the early stages of military action in the Mideast. If the war is short and relatively clean, most of the world will rejoice and get back to happier business, such as rejuvenating national economies. But if it turns into a protracted slog through desert and cities, if it provokes an onslaught of terrorist attacks . . . well, one can draw all sorts of dire scenarios.

Surely a brief campaign would let the Bush administration turn more of its attention and energy back to the home front, where the economy clearly remains fragile.

A short war, we hope, would let U.S.-Canada truck traffic — which was being slowed by heightened anti-terrorism measures — quickly return to a more normal schedule.

And most important, we would expect a short war to waste fewer human lives and less treasure.

So that’s what we’re praying for — a short war and a long spring.

This article appears in the March 24 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.