WIRE:09/15/2000 13:45:00 ET High oil costs stoke New England wood stove sales

BOSTON (Reuters) - Faced with a heating oil shortage and some double-digit increases from local electric utilities, New England residents are on a wood stove buying binge. "Sales are booming," said Josh Coutu, manager of Vermont Casting Factory Store in Natick, Massachusetts. "We"re already backed up three weeks on installations and we have four crews running. We thought last year was busy with Y2K, but this year is busier," he said. Energy executives and lawmakers have done little to ease concerns of an energy crisis this winter in New England, which consumes the most heating oil nationwide.

Crude oil reached a 10-year high price this week at $35.85 a barrel. At midday Friday the price was $35.15 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In addition, subsidiaries of NSTAR and Massachusetts Electric Co., the state"s largest utility, asked regulators earlier this month to approve rate increases of as much as 12 percent for about 2.5 million customers. Bob Chase, manager of wood stove retailer HearthWorks in N. Reading, Massachusetts, said his customers were complaining about the high price of heating oil and feared the dire forecasts. They were not convinced the Energy Department"s plan to create a 2 million barrel heating oil reserve for the Northeast would work.

Coutu said wood stove buyers should not expect immediate savings from their cast-iron, fire-breathing furnace. Wood stoves cost between $1,000 and $2,000, not including installation of a chimney, which can equal the stove cost, he said. But a family with a 2,000-square-foot home can use their wood stove as a primary heating source throughout the winter, burning four cords of wood, he said. A cord equals 128 cubic feet of wood and costs as little as $100 if an owner plans early and buys in the summer. At that rate, a family could easily halve the Energy Department"s estimate of $901 for an average home heating bill in New England this winter, Coutu said. New Hampshire state Rep. Jeb Bradley, an architect of his state"s electric deregulation plan, said he recently paid $1,500 for a "very elegant" wood stove with a soapstone top. "This reminds of the "70s when everybody put in wood stoves," said Bradley, a Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Republican. Wood stoves, however, require vigilance for safety reasons, and besides frequent trips to the wood pile, owners need to clean their chimneys more frequently and remove accumulated ash. "It"s not as easy as flipping a switch," Bradley said. ^

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 16, 2000