Black gold, Texas tea

If you’re having one of those days, cheer up by reminding yourself: “Well, at least I didn’t buy oil futures at $140 a barrel last year.”

Crude is trading at about half that now. Demand for energy tends to wane in a recession, with businesses stoking few factories, truckers toting fewer goods and – in the U.S. alone – about 6 million ex-workers not making that daily commute.

That’s the simplified version, of course, and many other factors – geopolitics, world currency values, inventories, what the cartel decides to do – also affect petroleum prices. And they’re creeping up, which is why you might want to put an oil story on your agenda soon.

If you’re not in an oil-producing state, you still might have refineries, a pipeline or some link in the supply chain, oil recyclers, transporters, exploration and certainly consumption. Not all oil-related firms are run by swaggering billionaires; poke around and see what you can find in your market.

Meanwhile, if you think Brent Crude is an adult film star and West Texas Intermediate sounds like a middle school somewhere near El Paso, take heart. There are plenty of resources for understanding those two common petroleum benchmarks and lots more about world’s most hotly traded commodity.

Start with the Energy Industry Administration. This unit of the U.S. Department of Energy has accessible analysts, tons of explanatory background material, historical price data for your charts and graphics and much more on its petroleum page. It even offers a chatty “This Week in Petroleum” newsletter; sign up here for e-mail feeds.

Here are other helpful sources on oil; several feature spreadsheets, databases and other elements that make great sidebars or interactive Web tools for your online packages

• American Petroleum Institute, an industry group.
• Pipeline101, another industry site with helpful info about the nation’s 200,000 miles of oil pipeline.
• NYMEX, the New York Mercantile Exchange, where oil futures are traded.
• Rigzone, an industry publication.
• Your state’s public service or utility commission.

Rising oil prices are sometimes a sign of economic recovery as corporations and consumers have more activity to fuel. Pundits lately are divided on whether that’s at work now, or whether the weaker dollar is just luring more traders into oil futures. Either way, a higher cost per barrel will translate into more expensive transportation and heating this fall.

Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.