After the Chill Comes the Bitter Bill

It is like paying for punishment. After suffering through weeks of numbing winterkill, Americans are now receiving the highest fuel bills in the history of staying warm. Nationally, heating bills are expected to be up an average of 45% over last year if cold weather continues, a still stiff 35% if temperatures moderate. The average U.S. household will spend $270 to $290 for the October-March season, v. $200 last year, and the total national home-heating bill could rise to $ 19 billion by the time March goes --or does not go--out like a lamb. In January, consumer prices generally surged 10% on an annual basis, the sharpest spurt in 18 months; some fuel prices rose even more (see chart). Those figures were collected before the worst of the cold weather and do not reflect the full inflation in heating bills.

National averages are held down by lower costs in the nation's warmer areas, and conceal what aghast homeowners in places hit hardest by the Big Freeze discover when they open their latest statement from the local utility. Frank Joseph, editor of a Washington oil trade journal, saw his January bill more than double, to $161. Chicagoan Louisa McPharlin shelled out $328 for oil heating and had to forgo other expenditures, "like decorating the house." Roger Young, a 31-year-old New York City securities analyst, got a $320 January bill from Consolidated Edison for his six-bedroom Westchester home, even though he used less gas and electricity than a year ago.

Lower-income people and the elderly are suffering most. St. Paul resident Ernest Wallin, 72, complains: "Our utility bills have gotten so high that we are having to go into our savings to pay them." In some cases, fuel bills are nearing or exceeding mortgage payments. In South Chicago, Betty Nelson, a mother of five children, got a $198 gas bill, far larger than her mortgage payment of $130.

Lucky New England. Normally energy-poor New England is the only freeze-hit area that is escaping monumental bill increases. It is heated almost entirely with oil, which was in plentiful though expensive supply before the cold weather hit. As temperatures dropped, reserves began running down. Two weeks ago the Government changed the rules of a complicated subsidy program in order to help New England oil wholesalers buy expensive foreign oil, rebuild supplies and hold consumer bills steady. Heating-oil prices are up only 2-c- to 3-c- per gal.

Elsewhere, householders have been hit by a double whammy. They must burn more fuel--as much as 23% more in the case of oil--to keep away the chill. And prices are rising, even though domestic oil and natural gas are still under federal control. Retail fuel-oil prices are up about 10% from a year ago. One reason: dealers can raise prices to cover the costs of importing foreign oil--and the U.S. is now getting a record 44% of its petroleum from abroad. The Federal Power Commission last year allowed the top price of natural gas piped across state lines to jump from 52-c- per 1,000 cu. ft. to $1.44, in an effort to prompt more production. The Emergency Natural Gas Act passed this month permits gas-short areas to buy from surplus areas at uncontrolled prices, and Eastern utilities are paying as much as $2.76 for gas piped in from California.

Utility officials are already bracing for howls from consumers and politicians when they report first-quarter profits that have been swollen by higher sales at higher prices. David Skedgell, vice president of the American Gas Association, concedes that some profits will be "pretty stupendous." But, he says, they will drop in the second quarter, because gas that is normally sold then is being used up now. Wall Street analysts expect profits of gas distributors for all 1977 to rise no more than 20%. But some companies are moving to blur any image of greed that consumers might get. Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. is refunding $10 to each of its 153,000 gas-heating customers, and Brooklyn Union

Gas Co. plans to deduct $12 to $15 from homeowners' bills in March and April.

Congress is also moving to help consumers. The Senate Budget Committee has approved a $300 million appropriation for the Community Services Administration, to be dispensed through the states in the form of payments as high as $250 to help needy families pay fuel bills. But the measure's fate is uncertain.

Another plan circulating in the Federal Energy Administration calls for ordering gas distributors to insulate their customers' homes and add the cost to fuel bills. That would be far too dictatorial, but some form of federal encouragement for better home insulation seems in order. An FEA official calculates that $8.3 billion invested in adequately insulating 34 million gas-heated homes would save 1.2 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas a year, equal in energy value to the output of 39 major nuclear power plants, and eventually save homeowners money.

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