11.01.2007

Gasoline is cheaper

Than heating oil, that is.

One of every two homes in New England burns heating oil, compared with just one in 20 in the rest of the country, where most homes use natural gas, according to the Energy Department. Now, as heating oil follows crude to record prices - the state this week reported the average cost of heating oil was $2.91 a gallon, up 24 percent from a year ago - the impact will fall most heavily on New England, economists said.

(Boston Globe)

My price for this winter is locked in and a lot lower than $2.91 (whew), but at this rate it won't be long before I can start sweating next winter. Or freezing, as the case may be.

This is New England's Achilles heel. Oil heat. (And that 50 percent figure means half the houses in New England have tanks of toxic waste in their basements, as well.) We have it pretty good here in a lot of ways. The winters suck, but we have plenty of water and rarely see (I'm knocking on wood here) tornadoes or hurricanes or (still knocking) forest fires. But we have oil heat; just about nobody else does (50 percent here, five percent there - the national average is 7 percent). There's no political or PR downside: When the price of gasoline goes up everybody gets upset, when the price of heating oil goes up, who cares?

Except, you know, me.

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