Cost of Oil Vs. Propane
btw, if you choose to go with oil (which you should if you don't like wasting money) an air/air heat pump is an excellent idea since you're installing A/C anyway. For oil furnaces (should your current one not be large enough etc.) I highly recommend Williamson or Thermopride; by far the two best choices. Both Thermopride and Williamson have very heavy heat exchangers, solid construction, and relatively simple controls.
http://www.thermopride.com/home
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http://www.thermopride.com/home
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In general NG is much cheaper right now. Historically there has not been a vast gap between oil and natural gas, this is a very recent phenomenon. Natural gas will probably maintain it's price advantage for the next few years and then it will disapear. NG use will increase dramatically on the east coast for power generation, home heating, and finally, export. In the last year, construction on hundreds of large (200MW+) NG powerplants have begun with plans to shut down low-cost older coal-fired power (quite short-sightedly on the utilities part because the wholesale price of power under contract from an older coal plant with less pollution control is less than $.025/KWH) and replace it with higher cost NG generation. Of course, this will take up much of the current slack in the gas market, and, coupled with increased domestic and export use, will cause the cost of NG per million BTU to be on par with oil.
- lsayre
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Once they get around to making gasoline and diesel fuel from natural gas, just watch it skyrocket in cost then!
they're already making gasoline and diesel fuel from natural gas and this usage will likely increase. Much NG is used to "sweeten" heavier crude stocks such as crude from parts of canada and venezuala which allows more light distillates and gasoline to be produced from a barrel of oil. Which, by the way, brings us back around to propane and why it will always cost, on average, more than #2 distillate (heating oil), it is a hydrogen rich fuel which is valued at most refineries more than heavier fuels because of it's hydrogen content and subsequent ability to "sweeten" heavy stocks. Since LPG is typically derived primarily from oil refining operations, is hydrogen rich, and, is produced at the expense of higher BTU and carbon rich fuels such as gasoline and heating oil/diesel, it will always cost more.