BUFFALO, N.Y. – The Erie County Department of Public Works is keeping a close eye on the price of oil as it heads into road paving season because rising oil prices could become a problem.
Asphalt is made with heavy crude oil, and commissioner William Geary said it’s at its highest price per ton in three years.
"The winter we had, the freeze-thaw cycles, the number of potholes we have, now the market problems we're having...this is probably one of our most challenging seasons,” Geary said.
This could make paving projects very expensive, and in Erie County this season, there are LOT of paving projects scheduled.
"Very worst case scenario is we tailor back how many miles of road we're going to pave this year,” Geary said.
He hopes that isn’t the case, though, since much of the planned paving is already budgeted for.
Residents and drivers have voiced frustration over road conditions since February, so what does this mean for them?
“What that's going to mean is maybe some of the roads we were going to do in later part of the summer, we'll either have to find more money, or we cut back on the amount of roads we're going to pave,” Geary explained.
So why exactly do these rising oil prices make paving so costly?
Geary says almost 80 percent of a project's cost is materials, so a rise in oil prices raises the cost of the majority of a paving project. He explained the 1 mile of mill and paving requires about 30,000 tons of asphalt, which means a 10-mile project would cost about $2 million based on currently asphalt prices-per-ton.
So far, price of oil and asphalt is not affecting any of the paving projects on deck, but Erie County DPW will be watching the market closely for the latter half of this summer.
This story has updated to correct the cost estimate for a paving project.
