Albert Cordiero, of North Providence, shows his receipt after filling up his Jeep with $60 worth of gas at Mario’s Mobil on Branch Avenue. He added that he’s not doing as much traveling because of the high cost of gasoline. The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

PROVIDENCE

Southeastern New England’s beleaguered motorists may not want to hear this, but experts say the price of petroleum products and gasoline will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.

Forces halfway around the globe — principally the surging economies of India and China — are affecting the price of petroleum products in a way that is expected to push prices at the pump steadily upward.

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Full report . . .

It is as basic as Economics 101, says Prof. Edinaldo Tebaldi, who teaches international economics and trade at Bryant University. “It is very simple: supply and demand, a fundamental law of economics,” Tebaldi says. “On the supply side, production has not increased all that much, and on the demand side we have a huge increase.”

As the world’s population skyrockets — the United Nations projects 8 billion people by 2025, up from 6.6 billion today — it is also growing richer. Even in poor nations, people are consuming more food, electricity, and appliances. China’s 1.3 billion people and the 1.1 billion who live in India are striving to climb into the middle class, with the high-protein diets, gasoline-fueled vehicles and electric gadgets that make life easier in the industrialized West.

“I think the big thing that isn’t going to change is the growth of China and India,” says Lincoln Chafee, the former U.S. senator who is now a scholar at Brown University’s Watson Institute. “They are really just dipping their straws into the world’s oil reservoir and are rapidly modernizing in the 21st century.

“The demand, when you think about it, has been pent up,” Chafee says. “I just don’t see it going back to the 20th-century levels.”

The upward pressure on prices is likely to get worse over the next few decades. Population growth will be accompanied by increases in oil-fueled transportation. The number of cars and trucks will probably double to 2 billion or more over the next 30 years. And the rapid development in countries that were once agricultural will mean twice as many airliners — more than 30,000 — in the skies in 20 years.

ALL OF THESE developments will require much more oil. The International Energy Agency, a leading energy forecaster for the United States and other Western nations, predicts that global oil consumption will increase by 35 percent by 2030.

The weak U.S. dollar, disruptions in oil production caused by military conflicts such as the war in Iraq, and a volatile oil commodity market have contributed to the soaring oil prices.

As current oil reserves are stretched thin, finding and exploiting new supplies is proving much more difficult and costly for U.S. companies. The 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) account for about 75 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. Several of those countries are making it more difficult for U.S. companies to exploit oil resources. And with prices — and profits — at record highs, there is no incentive for the OPEC nations to pump more oil.

Much of the new oil finds have been in western Africa, in such countries as Cameroon, Chad and Sudan, where China has been more successful in striking deals with local governments, says Kristen Johnson, a University of Rhode Island political science professor who studies international politics and resource issues.

While the demand for oil is down slightly in the United States over the past year, the historical trend has been increasing consumption. Between 2003 and 2007, imports of manufactured goods to the United States grew by 55 percent, but oil imports grew by 157 percent, says Tebaldi, the Bryant professor.

In addition, conditions unique to Rhode Island and the other New England states are factors in the higher prices at the pump.

“You really are at the end of the pipeline up there. There is no local supply; everything has to be shipped in by truck or barge,” says Ron Planting, an economist with the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association. “The supply channel is much more difficult. New England really is an island when it comes to supply.”

There are no refineries in the region; most gasoline comes to New England from the Gulf Coast states of Texas and Mississippi. There are other regional quirks. A four-season climate means that refineries must produce a “summer recipe” of gasoline that is more expensive to produce, says Planting. Components are added to gasoline in the summer to reduce the rate at which it evaporates. Otherwise, vapor lock might stall cars and trucks on steamy summer days.

“These components tend to be more costly,” Planting says.

IN ADDITION, Rhode Island adds 49.4 cents per gallon to the cost of motor fuel in state, federal and other taxes, according to the Petroleum Institute.

Rhode Island’s tax bite per gallon is higher than that of Massachusetts, which adds 41.9 cents per gallon in combined taxes. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine also have lower combined tax rates, while Connecticut’s rate is higher, at 62.5 cents per gallon. Finally, there are short-term market imperatives, such as the increased demand — and higher prices — for gasoline during the summer tourist season in New England.

The United States, with the least fuel-efficient vehicles and longest average commutes in the world, is the only major industrialized country to witness a surge in oil consumption since the severe oil shortages of the 1970s and the 1980s. But despite the sharp increase in gas prices in recent weeks, the United States still has some of the lowest gasoline prices in the industrial world.

Prices in most European countries, including Britain, crossed the $7 per gallon threshold in 2006 and have climbed above $8 since. The principal reason for the much higher prices in Europe is the tax burden; taxes make up 66 percent of motor-fuel prices in England, compared with about 15 percent in the U.S.

Perhaps James Schlesinger, the nation’s first energy czar in the 1970s, said it best. The United States, he said, was capable of only two approaches to energy policy: “complacency or crisis.”

“We’ve got to use some common sense and come up with solutions,” Chafee says. “Oil is a finite resource.”

Tomorrow: The soaring price of marine fuel is forcing boaters to think twice before heading out on the water.

smackay@projo.com