A year ago, right after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and a vast network of natural gas pipelines, who would have thought the onset of the heating season would bring good news?
Jim Halloran: For the last five or six years, for all intents and purposes, we've been seeing prices go up and this is the first year we've seen prices... we've had a significant cutback in prices.
That's Jim Halloran, energy analyst for National City Bank's Private Client Group. He says, in essence, these lower prices are the fruits of energy deregulation, combined with favorable winter forecasts and storage facilities at record capacity. So what does this mean for the consumer?
Jim Halloran: There are some very good bargains out there for variable contracts that I think shouldn't give people too much pause. The situation is such that if even prices bounce back up, absent of something cataclysmic, they're not going to go up that high.
And that's not just lip service. Halloran says he's already taken out a variable rate contract for his family. Dan Moulthrop, 90.3.