LOWER PRICE PREDICTED

At Vaincourt Fuels in Malone, prices Wednesday were $4.49 for heating oil and $4.84 for kerosene.

Vice President of Sales and Supply John Baird said the company does allow customers to lock in an amount. They are in the process of determining those prices for the upcoming winter.

"That works well for the customer when prices go up, but not as well when the prices drop," Baird said.

He believes prices will fall this winter and will continue to drop within the next year.

The company also offers a cap program, where the price a customer pays can rise only to a set amount but can drop to any level. The program includes an insurance fee so the company is covered if the price drops dramatically.

VOUCHER OFFER

Vaincourt Fuels also helps some of its customers as a distributor for the Citizens Energy Corp.

Customers who qualify with the Massachusetts-based organization receive a voucher they can redeem with Vaincourt Fuels for 100 gallons of free fuel oil or kerosene, which is then reimbursed by Citizens Energy.

The Vaincourt Fuels Web site states that people who receive HEAP assistance automatically qualify for the voucher.

"We were the first company to bring that into this area last year," Baird said. "We have helped a lot of people with this."

COMPARISONS

At James C. Smith and Sons Wednesday, heating oil was $4.60 a gallon; and kerosene, $4.90 a gallon.

Owner Carl Smith said his company has never offered customers locked-in prices. In some years, that might have helped his customers, but in others it would have hurt them when oil prices dropped during the winter.

That was the case several winters ago, when Smith and Son's prices dropped from $1.20 a gallon in September 2000 to $1 a gallon in April 2002.