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| Heating Costs Won't Be as Steep This Winter |
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(September 25, 2006) --
The price of natural gas has dropped 47 percent since this time last year. Likewise, the wholesale price of home heating oil is down 20 percent.
If prices don't rise for some unpredictable reason, and if the winter is not unusually cold, home owners could save as much as $250 compared with last year, some energy analysts estimate.
"This is the equivalent of a major tax cut - almost the same as right after 9/11 when the government sent checks to everybody," says Dennis Jacobe, chief economist for the Gallup Organization in Washington. "What's nice is that it particularly helps middle- and lower-income people who were hurt the most when prices were soaring."
Many variables affect whether consumers see any savings, industry representatives warn. "You can't just take prices today or the past week and assume customers will save 40 or 50 percent," says Paul Wilkinson of the American Gas Association in Washington. "We know for the first six months of the year, prices were actually higher than they were for first six months of last year."
Plus, a weak El Nino, the current and trade-wind pattern in the Pacific that affects weather in the US, complicates the weather forecasting business. Typically, an El Nino creates more rain in the Southwest and Southeast and on the East Coast, but the correlation is less certain during a weak pattern, says Ken Reeves, director of forecasting at AccuWeather in State College, Pa.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor, Ron Scherer (09/25/2006) |
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