This pundit is immersed in oil data
Tom Kloza, chief analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, is the go-to guy for those who want to know why gasoline prices are soaring and where they're heading.
When it comes to gasoline, Tom Kloza doesn't feel your pain. He lives only about four miles from his office.
In fact, the price pressure at the pump is good for him. Crises are prime times for pundits, and no one knows that better than Kloza.
As chief analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, a business he helped found 28 years ago, Kloza has been in much demand lately as consumers grapple with gasoline bills that rival mortgage payments.
He's been quoted from coast to coast by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, providing an often sardonic and occasionally controversial view of why energy prices are as high as they are and where they might be headed.
On some days, Kloza said, "I'm in more papers than Sudoku."
Kloza, 54, is no stranger to television or radio either, although his appearances are limited by his reluctance to make the 70-mile schlep from his office in Wall, N.J., to the studios and soundstages in New York City.
Demand for his services wasn't always this strong. When Kloza and a friend launched their petroleum-price tracking business in 1980, the oil markets were downright sleepy compared with the roller-coaster '70s. Then came oil price deregulation, followed by the introduction of crude oil and gasoline futures trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"I wish I could say that we saw that coming," Kloza said. "If oil hadn't been decontrolled in 1981, it would've been a pretty slow go."
Instead, the Oil Price Information Service has prospered, attracting thousands of clients looking for detailed wholesale and retail price information for gasoline and diesel. Owned by UCG, a Gaithersberg, Md.-based business publishing firm, OPIS, as it's known, puts out newsletters, stages industry conferences and operates a website ( www.opisnet.com).
Updates on "rack rates" and clinics on converting service stations to biodiesel can be pretty dry, even in these energy-obsessed times. But Kloza, a New Jersey native without the Joisey accent, brings an irreverent flair to a complex and fraught subject.
It's most noticeable in Kloza's blog, Speaking of Oil (blogs.opisnet.com), where, to cite one recent example, proposals for a summertime gas-tax holiday were dissected under the heading "The CaCa Chronicles."
Kloza came to energy punditry through the unlikely route of an English degree from tiny St. Francis University -- alma mater of former NBA stars Maurice Stokes and Norm Van Lier -- in Pennsylvania.
