ICPA Initiates Pro Oil Heat Campaign against Natural Gas

The week of June 23 saw the beginning of a summer-long campaign initiated by the Independent Connecticut Petroleum Association on radio to combat the natural gas utilities efforts to encourage heating oil customers to switch to natural gas. Yankee Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas have been using radio and direct mail to encourage conversions.

ICPA has already distributed just over 100,000 “Controlling Your Energy Costs” brochures through its members to consumers, highlighting that converting makes no sense given heating oil’s historic price advantage, and our ability to truly save people money through energy conservation.

The media campaign involves $100,000 of radio advertising designed to counter the false, misleading and inaccurate claims of the utilities to get people to switch to a fuel whose commodity cost has increased 83 percent since January. A fuel that is not purely domestic, but decidedly foreign when it comes to the need for African LNG to meet demand. Even at the supply end, their owners are headquartered in Spain. From a ‘green” perspective, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes more to global warming than does heating oil.  Credit Lines

As the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association notes, the message heard by fuel dealers attending the VFDA Conference held at Basin Harbor on May 27-29 ‘ get your credit lines in order now. The average sized company in Vermont (2 million gallons) sells 600 thousand gallons during the first eight weeks of the year.  At current wholesale prices that means dealers need a line of credit of $2.4 million dollars. VFDA is working with banks, the Douglas administration and the Vermont Economic Development Authority to come up with ways to help fuel dealers during this difficult time.