From the Office of Senator Kerry

Thursday, February 24, 2000

Massachusetts residents were greeted with an unwelcome surprise this winter: a sharp increase in the price of home-heating oil. Families were faced with the unwelcome and unfortunate choice of having to choose between meeting their basic needs and paying their soaring heating bills. Now that we are taking steps to get this crisis under control, it is time to ensure that working families are never again forced to make such dubious decisions.

The price of residential heating oil in Massachusetts averaged $.98 per gallon in October 1999 and slowly rose to $1.19 by mid-January 2000. However, by February the price reached $2.03 across the state. To consumers throughout New England it appears that as soon as the weather turned cold – as soon as families needed more oil to heat their homes – the price spiked far beyond what can be explained by cold weather demand alone. More than 7 million households rely on heating fuel to keep warm during cold Northeastern winters – it is as basic to those households as water and food. Such high prices are especially hard on low-income families and the working poor; families who do not qualify for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), but who nonetheless struggle to make ends meet. The situation is unacceptable. We cannot allow basic necessities to be priced out of the reach of working families. Fortunately, the price for heating oil has fallen some and it appears that the worst of this winter is over.

The Home Heating Readiness Act requires that the Secretary of Energy, acting through the Administrator of the Energy Information Agency (EIA), submit to Congress by September 1 of each year a Home Heating Readiness Report evaluating the readiness of the heating oil and propane industries to supply fuel under various weather conditions, including rapid decreases in temperature, in the coming winter.

The idea behind the Home Heating Readiness Report is simple and old: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In assessing the current price spike, the EIA concluded that "a bout of severe winter weather, following two relatively mild winters, caught suppliers and consumers in the Northeast by surprise." With the kind of timely, comprehensive evaluation that the Home Heating Readiness Act calls for, we will greatly lessen the chance that we will be "caught by surprise" again.