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Oilheat dealers work together to resist the threat
of government-sponsored natural gas expansion
By John MacKenna
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Officials in Connecticut, Massachusetts
and New York are pursuing natural gas
expansion with proposals and/or projects
aimed at making it easier and less expensive
for utilities to expand their distribution
networks. The plans take dead aim at the
oil heat market, with visions of hundreds of
thousands of current homes and business
converting to natural gas heat.
The proposed expansion of natural gas
in the Northeast is playing out on a state-
by-state basis but is also part of a regional
strategy. The governors of the six New
England states have highlighted natural gas
expansion as a shared priority and recently
issued a joint statement confirming their
commitment.
“As the region’s electric and natural gas
systems have become increasingly interde-
pendent, ensuring that we are efficiently
using existing resources and securing addi-
tional clean energy supplies will be critical
to New England’s economic future,” the
governors wrote in a statement. “To ensure a
reliable, affordable anddiverse energy system,
we need investments in additional energy
efficiency, renewable generation, natural gas
pipelines and electric transmission.”
While the governors are beating the
drum for expansion, the region’s utilities
are grappling with serious supply issues
that have caused natural gas spot prices to
spike and interruptible gas customers to
turn elsewhere for energy.
(See related story
on Page 22.)
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The state and regional trade associations
that represent oil heat dealers are treating
these incursions as existential threats and
challenging the plans wherever possible.
The most public contest is in
Connecticut, where the state officials are
working to implement an aggressive state
energy plan proposed by Gov. Dannel
P. Malloy. The governor put natural gas
front and center in October 2012 when he
announced that he was looking to make
the state more competitive by converting
300,000 homes to natural gas heat.
O
ilheat dealers are working
together to defend the industry
against a new generation of
competitive threats launched
by state officials trying to
expand the natural gas
footprint in the Northeast.
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