As Price of Oil Soars, Users Shiver and Cross Their Fingers
When David Harris built his 2,000-square-foot hilltop home nine years ago, he wanted to put in natural gas, but the utility wouldn’t run a line to his house. Like many people here, he was stuck using heating oil.
Mr. Harris added a wood stove to help cut costs and now uses only about one-third of the oil the house would otherwise need. But that did not stop a deliveryman for Crowley Fuel from handing him a $471.21 bill earlier this month for a refill that should get him to April.
“You just cross your fingers and hope that it doesn’t get too much worse,” Mr. Harris said.
Actually, it probably will — for him and the residents of the roughly eight million other American homes that use heating oil, mostly in a band from Maine to Pennsylvania.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/heating-oil-costs-surge-and-many-in-northeast-cant-switch.html?pagewanted=all
