The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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10 APRIL 2016 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com STATE BY STATE NEWS Natural gas companies, electric utilities and state legislatures pose challenges to the fuel oil industry in many states. What follows is a rundown of current issues in the six states of New England. (For coverage of New York State, and the New York Oil Heating Association, see pg. 13 of the February 2016 issue of Fuel Oil News.) Connecticut Lobbying for repeal of a portion of the Connecticut state energy plan, educating legislators about Bioheat, and pursuing a law- suit against the state's Department o f E n e r g y a n d E n v i r o n m e n t a l Protection are current priorities of the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association. Its members focused on those goals on a lobbying day at the state Capitol in Hartford, in which 110 marketers participated, said Chris Herb, president of CEMA, which is based in Cromwell. Turnout for the lobbying day was exceptional considering that it was held in February, Herb said, "not a time, typically, that the association would call on its mem- bers to leave their businesses and bring employees with them. I wanted our members to bring their employees – and many of them did – to be able to look a legislator in the eye and say, 'This is my livelihood. This is how I send my kids to college, this is how I pay my mortgage, this is how I pay my taxes.' We wanted to make it personal. I think that was accomplished to a certain extent." Herb continued, "Our 'ask' was to repeal the portions of the Connecticut Comprehensive Energy Strategy that pertain to natural gas expansion and conversion. The good news is that a number of legislators" asked for suggested legislation "and we're going to pursue that with them." Three years ago the state changed its energy policy to encourage 300,000 people to convert from home heating oil to natural gas, for which 900 miles of new pipeline would have to be constructed. "That's like building a pipeline from Hartford, Connecticut, to Nashville, Tennessee," Herb said. "For a small state that's a lot of miles." Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy "sold the legislature on the campaign slogan that natural gas was cleaner, cheaper and more reliable," Herb said, noting that at the time fuel oil was a 3,000 part- per-million sulfur product, with a price nearing four dollars a gallon. "That slogan ended up carrying a policy that has been extremely detrimental to not only marketers—CEMA members--but it is also detrimental to consumers because circumstances changed. We told them that commodity prices are volatile and they change, they change quickly," Herb recalled, "and that's exactly what happened." Today heating oil is less expensive than natural gas, it is cleaner now at a 500 ppm standard, moving toward a July 1, 2018, 15 ppm standard, and "all the home heating oil sold in Connecticut is Bioheat," Herb said. "We just really wanted to take this opportunity to say that this is the time to reverse directions, to reconsider the state's energy policy, and to adopt something that is more fuel-neu- tral, something that is not price-based, and something that allows our members to compete with utilities. Because right now competi- tion is much more difficult if you're in the liquid fuel business than if you're in the utility business because of all the state incentives and frankly the false sense of security that the state of Connecticut is providing the public when they continue to promote natural gas." At the same time, CEMA is pursuing a lawsuit against the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. A brief filed in state Supreme Court in February claims that the state of Connecticut did not follow its own environmental laws. The lawsuit is asking is for equal treat- ment of businesses whether they are small family businesses or global utilities. As of this writing, the justices are reviewing the brief, Herb said, and CEMA anticipates that oral arguments are likely to be heard this spring. Maine "This past summer we've had to fight utili- ties trying to be in the business of financing heat pumps and qualifying who could put them in," said Jamie Py, president of the LOBBYING: STATE BY STATE Common and disparate issues confront state associations in the Northeast. Here's how they're dealing with them. By Stephen Bennett Craig Snyder, president of Wesson Energy in Waterbury, Conn. (left), and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association, and Chris Herb, president of CEMA, brief members before they set out to lobby legis- lators at the Connecticut Capitol in Hartford. PHOTO COURTESY OF AUSTIN HERB