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Fuel-price rises prompt prayer

by Bill Bowder

THE SOARING costs of aviation fuel have threatened relief work in some of the world’s remotest regions. But the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) has said it will cut operating costs, absorb the increase in fuel costs, and appeal to its supporters for more funds rather than cut back on flying.

“It is a serious crisis,” said David Fyock, MAF’s vice president of resources. It had been caused partly by a “massive” 43.5-per-cent reduction in the world supply of aviation fuel since 1995. “This means fierce competition for dwindling supplies,” he said.

The specially refined fuel is essential to keep MAF’s fleet of 134 piston-engined planes airborne. Its aircraft now cost $234 an hour to fly in fuel alone. They are delivering food, medicines, and other supplies to areas where no roads exist. In Indonesia, MAF has been forced to stockpile $500,000-worth of fuel, enough for three months’ flying, because of the fuel shortage.

Pray at the pump.
Campaigners in the United States, protesting at the increase in petrol prices, have taken to holding vigils outside petrol stations, press reports say. The Pray at the Pump campaign started when a Maryland activist, Rocky Twyman, took the volunteers for a city soup-run to pray at a filling station, when other volunteers failed to turn up because they could not afford the cost of their petrol to drive in from the suburbs.

Since then, Mr Twyman, a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church, has led vigils in which the campaigners have linked arms around petrol pumps and prayed for lower prices, he told The Sunday Telegraph. After an all-night vigil in Toledo, Ohio, prices had dropped by 30 cents, he said.


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