CABOT, Vt. (AP) – West of Marshfield, there are a few tantalyzing stretches of fresh pavement, giving a driver a reminder of what a smooth road feels like. Heading east toward Cabot, there are ruts, cracks and bumps aplenty.

It looks like it’s going to remain that way for a while. The state Agency of Transportation has taken the seven-mile stretch of U.S. Route 2 northeast of Montpelier, a main route across northern New England, off its list of paving projects for the year. The reason? Rising oil prices.

Rising costs have forced the state to cancel several paving projects because the bids have come in higher than budgeted.

Other states also are monitoring the rising prices, but how the cost increases will play out elsewhere won’t be clear until Congress passes a major new transportation spending bill. That’s when states will know how much federal funding will be coming their way.

But it is clear Vermont is far from alone in facing the rising costs. The industry publication Engineering News Record reported in April that asphalt costs were up 13 percent from a year earlier.

Ken Kobetsky, engineering program director with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said that some states have escalation clauses in their paving contracts to account for rising asphalt and fuel costs.

That’s the case in Tennessee, said Kim Keelor, spokeswoman for that state’s Department of Transportation. She said asphalt prices there had been rising somewhat, but, “We have had to cancel no projects nor have we had to postpone any.”

Oil prices affect the cost of paving in three ways, said Christian Zimmermann, president of Pike Industries, a New Hampshire-based company that is Vermont’s biggest paving contractor.

There’s the diesel fuel to run the dump trucks, rollers and other equipment. There’s the No. 2 heating oil used to heat the asphalt so it can be mixed with sand or stone. And there’s the asphalt itself, a crude oil derivative that has gone up in price from less than $100 a ton in the late 1990s to $220 to $300 a ton today, depending on grade.

Kobetsky said rising energy prices have also triggered cost increases for other materials, including the sand, stone and other aggregates that get blended with asphalt to form the hotmix paving material, and concrete. Those increases stem mainly from the high energy costs of producing the materials.

Whenever states cut back on paving, it just leaves roads rougher, which in turn becomes another way that the rising price of oil pinches the general public.

Frank Moretti of The Road Information Program, a nonprofit group that tracks transportation issues, pointed to a study released by his group last month that ranked metropolitan areas on the conditions of their roads. The average motorist in the metro areas with the worst roads spent an extra $401 a year on added fuel costs and vehicle maintenance.

In Vermont, the state increased its paving budget this year by about 20 percent, to $40 million. But that money won’t pay for what the state Agency of Transportation had hoped would be an increase in miles paved over last year.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Dawn Terrill, the state transportation secretary. “We strengthened the paving budget by over 20 percent, but we’re only going to be able to maintain the volume of work we had been doing. We’ve ended up losing the opportunity to actually treat more roadway.”

New Hampshire managed to find some extra money to pay for increased paving costs, but that’s not been the case in Vermont. The result is that northern New England’s relatively short paving season for 2005, originally expected to be a banner one, will be just so-so.

“It’s not down from last year,” Zimmermann said. “But it’s not up the way we thought it was going to be.” The company had launched a recruitment drive earlier this spring to bring on more workers, but has had to scale it back, he said.

At least two other Vermont paving projects will be affected by rising costs:

– 16.5 miles on Route 14 between Hartford and Royalton will be put off until next year.

– 7.7 miles on U.S. Route 7 between Wallingford and Rutland, which will get just a thin topcoat this year and temporary lane markings until more extensive work next year.