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Hold on to Your Heating Bills
Survive Rising Energy Costs By Sue Marquette Poremba
Every summer, usually in July, we get a letter from the oil company with an offer to pre-pay for our winter fuel. By paying several hundred dollars in one lump sum, we guarantee that our oil will cost a pre-determined amount per gallon that will not change even if the cost of oil increases.
This summer, July and then August came and went without a letter from the oil company. Finally in September, we received notice stating that the oil company would not be offering the locked-in prices this year. Oil, the letter said, had become too expensive to make the offer feasible.
My husband put down the notice and said, "I suppose we should get used to it."
"Natural gas production in the United States peaked in 2001," says Greg Pahl, author of Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005). "We now rely on Canada to supply approximately 15 percent of our natural gas."
Unlike oil, which can be easily transported on tanker ships, natural gas found in Europe, Asia or Africa would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to import. "You can't put a pipeline under the ocean," says Tom Mast, author of Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage
