Oil prices hit the road

St. Paul, Minn. — State transportation officials say the rising price of oil means the cost of fixing roads has gone up. Oil is one component of the material used to resurface roads, seal cracks and fill in potholes.

MnDOT's, Nancy Sannes, said some of the agency's contractors are able to buy oil and store it for months.

"So they've been able to buy some of the asphalt that goes into our bituminous at a lower price. So it will be a little bit of a lag in that price increase but I expect to see it fairly soon. In fact, the last letting it looked like a couple of projects were impacted by the increase in oil prices, fairly significantly," Sannes said.

Sannes said there has been an eight-percent increase in the price of the bituminous mixture over the last month.

Minnesota may be better off than some states because old asphalt gets recycled here.

"We allow in most cases 30% recycled material into our asphalt mixtures and that also tempers our prices. I think we're a fairly aggressive state in recycling, so it does save us a lot of money and it does control the price because that material is right on the project and is reused immediately, especially outstate," said Sannes.

She expects to see a much bigger increase, as more contractors buy high-priced oil, now, for next year's projects.