Natural Gas Choice of Home Owners

It's a bad time to be a heating oil customer.
Not only are they paying record-high prices to heat their homes, they're also being blamed by some for the region's dependence on foreign oil and for contributing to global warming.

Natural gas delivery companies say they have the answer: Convert to gas. The companies say that the price of natural gas is significantly lower than heating oil right now and that switching to "green natural gas technologies" will help prevent climate change.

Steve Holliday, the chief executive of National Grid PLC, the British company that recently purchased Keyspan Energy Delivery, the state's largest gas utility, says his company's 53 percent market share in the Greater Boston area should be closer to 90 percent.

"Natural gas is way out there as the cleanest fossil fuel there is," Holliday said. "There's a huge opportunity here to clean things up by burning natural gas."
In the struggle for supremacy in New England between heating oil dealers and natural gas utilities, everything right now is going the way of natural gas. Gas is cheaper, more versatile, more secure, and, by some measures, more environmentally friendly.
US Census data indicate nearly half of Massachusetts households already use natural gas, while roughly 35 percent use heating oil. Gas utilities have taken market share away from heating oil dealers over the last decade, but the pace of oil-to-gas conversions has slowed.

National Grid numbers indicate conversions within the Keyspan territory reached a peak of 16,800 in 2003, when the company was giving away standard-size boilers and furnaces to homeowners who switched to gas. After the giveaways were replaced with a program offering new customers discounts on boilers and heating oil tank removals, conversions fell to 10,900 in 2006 and were off 9 percent through the first nine months of this year.

The target market for conversions tends to be homeowners who are facing a significant outlay of money to replace an aging boiler or furnace, but that's not always the case.