With cold weather approaching, Mayors and Congressmen are concerned about the availability of low cost heating fuel for their citizens. Congressman Bernard Sanders (VT) has taken action to assure the availability of heating oil in the Northeast. Sanders, a former mayor of Burlington, sponsored the "Home Heating Oil Price Stability Act"(HR 3608) that would reserve two million barrels of home heating oil in Northeast storage and 4.7 million barrels in one of the four Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) caverns in the Gulf Coast to be used to drive down prices in case of a price spike.

According to the Congressman's office, through his coalition and working with the Department of Energy, he has secured funding for the Reserve and has stockpiled the two million barrels in two locations in the Northeast. "The critical component that is still missing is the so-called "trigger mechanism," that is the legislation that would empower the Secretary of Energy to release the oil and the conditions that have to exist in order for him or her to have that authority," Sanders said.

On October 19, the Senate passed the bill that would provide the needed "trigger" mechanism. According to Sanders' press release, the Senate language would allow the Energy Secretary to release oil from the Reserve if a "severe supply disruption occurred." This is defined in two ways: "a regional supply shortage of significant scope and duration, or the price differential between crude oil and heating oil increases by more than 60 percent over its five-year rolling average during the winter months, for seven consecutive days." Rep. Sanders, obviously, prefers his House version which has far less restrictive language. Both bills have the trigger mechanism, leaving the resolution of the other differences to occur in a House-Senate Conference Committee.

Earlier this month, Rep. Sanders and several other Congressmen called on President Clinton to ban exportation of heating oil to foreign counties. According to Rep. Sanders' press release, a report from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration indicated that, "oil companies exported some 9.3 million barrels of heating oil during July and August which would have provided enough heating oil to an estimated 370,000 households." The Energy Information Administration's study anticipates that increased crude oil prices will cause expenditures for home heating oil to increase by as much as 40 percent compared to the last two winters.

As heating oil prices increase the poor and elderly are disproportionately affected and many organizations including the Conference of Mayors have expressed firm support for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and have urged the increase in FY 2001 LIHEAP funding to $1.65 billion. As an important safety net program, the LIHEAP block grant has been traditionally underfunded and as a result advocates have noted a 35 percent drop in the number of households receiving LIHEAP assistance to defray heating costs. A recent survey of LIHEAP recipients revealed that in 1999, almost 21 to 25 percent of those surveyed went without medical care and 12 to 13 percent went without food to pay high heating bill costs.