May 8--Battered by high prices at the pump? What about being walloped more at home? That's the fear of some homeowners who heat with natural gas and worry about future price surges.

Many people probably don't know it, but there are alternatives to gas suppliers KeySpan Energy Delivery and Consolidated Edison Co. They're called "energy service companies," ESCOs for short.

Recently, Infinite Energy, a Gainesville, Fla.-based company that operates as Intelligent Energy in New York, heavily promoted its offer: "With natural gas deregulation, we guarantee a fixed price on your natural gas for three years."

But things are not as simple as they seem.

That "fixed price" covers just one portion of a customer's cost, for the supply of the fuel, not its distribution, which in this region is done by KeySpan or Con Edison, for a separate charge.

Moreover, the fixed rate for a therm, a unit of measure for natural gas, could actually be higher than what the utilities are charging, and a price locked in long-term can always exceed the rate that would be paid otherwise for any one month, depending on what happens in the market.

And finally, the cost of gas isn't the only consideration. Another is Intelligent Energy's $7.95 monthly fee and a cancellation fee that can be hefty depending on when a customer terminates the contract, and the estimated annual gas use.

For now, an advocate has advice for consumers who want to compare offer natural gas to residential customers in this region, and to see if there is benefit to getting fuel from a nonutility company.

"I think they need to be wary," said Gerald Norlander, executive director of the Albany-based Public Utility Law Project, which advocates for low-income customers. One problem, Norlander said, is that the market is complicated; it's difficult to sift through all the factors that make up a bill to get an apples-to-apples price comparison, he said. "Most economic textbooks," he said, "will say that a prerequisite for a competitive marketplace is information in the hands of the buyer."

The restructuring of the residential market is a work in progress. New York's Public Service Commission, the state's regulator of utilities, acted in the mid-1990s in an effort to bring competition to the supply of natural gas and electricity to residential customers. With natural gas, KeySpan and Con Edison still supply the gas to most of those customers in addition to distributing the fuel to them.

Competition just hasn't made a significant impact on people who use natural gas to heat their homes. In fact, many consumers might ask: What competition?

As of January, only 7.3 percent of residential customers for natural gas in the state used a nonutility supplier, accounting for 13.3 percent of the volume supplied to that part of the market, according to PSC data. Figures for the volume of gas used were comparable in New York City and Long Island, ranging from 11.4 percent to 13.8 percent, according to the PSC.

"I think competition in the residential market has developed slower than in the commercial and industrial sector," said PSC spokesman David Flanagan. "I think it takes time."

Craig Goodman, president of the National Energy Marketers Association in Washington, D.C., said: "It's been slow not only in New York, but everywhere."

Robert Fani, president of KeySpan, concluded: "We're finding that the majority of customers are still not comfortable with this competitive environment."

William Ferris, state legislative representative for AARP in New York, bemoans the limited competition. "We want energy deregulation to work for one basic reason," he said. "Competition, we hope, will bring prices down."

For now, Norlander said: "I'm not aware that small customers are receiving substantial benefits out of restructuring. We know that when people see something that's good for them, they jump; they go to cell phones; they use e-mails. They adapt very quickly to things that are good for them."

Adapting to change isn't easy for consumers of natural gas, energy service company representatives argue. They say busy consumers have little time for a difficult comparison shopping, and they don't have to choose among the suppliers because they can stay with a utility. Also, some in the trade argue, consumer savings would be greater if various utility product and service costs were calculated differently.

Cathy Allen, 47, has hit some bumps in a quest to cut her costs. Allen's house in Calverton is heated with natural gas, and she cooks with gas, too. The fuel was being supplied by a company that was separate from the utility but a unit of KeySpan Corp. when a letter announced a change in March 2003: KeySpan Energy Services had decided to "exit the natural gas business in the commercial and residential markets in the New York region." With no change to her price, her account was being switched to Spring Valley-based Econnergy Energy Co.

Allen was given the option of contacting KeySpan to designate another energy service company or to say she wanted her natural gas supplied by the utility. But she chose to stay with Econnergy and, when her contract came up for renewal later that year, she signed up for a capped-price plan that was recommended by the company and came with a "guarantee that your rates will be lower than KeySpan's" on an annual basis. She believes she did save that year, but when she renewed again the following year, Allen said the plan that had been recommended before was not offered, and so she switched to a variable-price plan.

She still expected to save, though. Allen, a mother of two children, ages 16 and 13, and her husband had separated. "I was going to cut corners any way I could," she said. Then, as fuel prices surged this winter, she began suspecting she wasn't saving.

Apparently, she was right. Joanne Schindelheim, Econnergy's marketing vice president, said the company could not immediately comment on Allen's account.

But she added that knowing where the consumer lived, "Econnergy's gas pricing was higher than KeySpan's this winter. A year ago, our variable prices were lower. At this time, we cannot know how our variable pricing will compare next year."

Whether or not a consumer can save depends on the circumstances, Schindelheim said. "When the markets were more stable," she said, "we were confident that we could promise people that they were going to save." Now, she said, Econnergy does not guarantee savings but has more flexibility than a utility in choosing from a variety of pricing plans and promoting what it thinks best for a customer.

Schindelheim also questioned competitor Intelligent Energy's pricing. In New York City and on Long Island, Intelligent Energy was offering a 99.9-cent-a-therm rate on Wednesday, according to the company's Jason Nowling. Said Schindelheim: "For somebody right now to lock in for three years, that's kind of a high price, especially at this time." Neither KeySpan nor Con Edison offers residential, natural gas customers fixed-price plans. As an indicator of the price difference, KeySpan's gas price for residential customers on Long Island is about 80 cents per therm for May. Intelligent Energy says such a snapshot ignores all the factors necessary to make a comparison.

Intelligent Energy acknowledges that its price per therm is typically higher than the rate charged by the utilities on Long Island and in the city on the date the plan is purchased. But the pitch of Intelligent Energy is that prices will rise above the fixed rate if the cost of gas continues rising.

"I don't know what prices are going to do in the future," said company president Darin Cook, "but if they follow the same trend, you're going to save money. I can't guarantee that. What I can offer is stability."

One thing the state offers consumers who want to check out the residential market for natural gas is a Web site, www.askpsc.com. The site has general information and charts with comparisons of companies based on any information those companies choose to provide.

The PSC says it is working on ways to improve those charts, but for now, a visitor to its site can find that it still takes a call to a company to get some of the basics. A chart carrying an April 2005 date, for example, said the estimated residential monthly bill for 100 therms of gas in a non-winter month was $184.15 (based on a variable rate) for KeySpan Long Island, which includes a small portion of Queens, and $188.11 (based on a fixed price) for Intelligent Energy in the same area.

Say a visitor to the site wanted to know what the cancellation fee would be. For KeySpan, such a fee is not applicable, the chart advised. And for Intelligent Energy? The state site simply said: "Please call [the company] for details."

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