While most state residents enjoy cheaper heating costs today than a year ago, a small group has not been so lucky.
Those who heat with propane and heating oil - typically people in poorer, rural areas - in the past year have seen their costs rise dramatically. The average cost of propane in North Carolina is now less than 3 cents away from its highest retail price in the past decade.
Though the two energy sources are used by barely 540,000 North Carolina households, they are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine that foretell a broader trend: rising energy costs.
Propane and heating oil, like their relative gasoline, are priced on a real-time basis, reflecting actual market costs. Therefore, they are early indicators of pricing trends that may take a few years to trickle down to those who use electricity and natural gas.
For the 15 percent of North Carolina households that heat with propane and heating oil, the situation has been exacerbated by the unusually cold blast of December weather.
"Their consumption for the month of December probably doubled," said Greg Lane, a district manager for Heritage Propane in Fayetteville and M&J Gas in Lumberton.
These households don't buy from large utility companies whose rates are regulated by the state. Instead, they buy from independent dealers who set their own prices, and those can vary considerably. Dealer prices are related to wholesale prices, but the dealers are free to charge what they want. Filling up some tanks can exceed $1,000.
In the past week, propane prices in the state ranged from $2.27 a gallon to $3.90 a gallon, according to surveys taken by the N.C. State Energy Office. The statewide average was $2.97 a gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, up 13 percent in the past year.
Heritage Propane was charging $2.70 a gallon this week, up from $2.50 in the summer, Lane said. He said Heritage was able to keep prices down because it has hundreds of locations across the country and buys in bulk.
The price of heating oil in the state ranged from $2.95 a gallon to $3.41 a gallon last week, according to state data. The average price statewide for a gallon was $3.10, according to federal data. That is a 19 percent increase in the past year.
The cost of propane and heating oil has tripled over the past decade in this state, federal data show.
The cost households pay for electricity and natural gas, on the other hand, can be delayed for several years from today's market prices for coal and gas.
The large utilities that supply electricity and natural gas buy their fuel through long-term contracts and futures contracts. Electric utilities, for example, lock in on coal prices three years into the future, and their customers are paying for coal bought three years ago.
As a result, most residents have not yet caught up to energy pricing trends that have begun their post-recession increases.
Progress Energy's residential electricity rate is about 4 percent lower today than it was a year ago. Duke Energy's is down 2 percent. Piedmont Natural Gas charges 22 percent less, and PSNC Energy is down 4 percent.
Electricity and natural gas are used to heat 82.6 percent of the households in this state.
The one area where everyone sees energy pricing trends as they happen is at the gasoline pump. Prices broke $3 per gallon this month.
The rise in energy prices this year is being driven by a resumption in economic activity, which raises the demand for petroleum products by increasing economic output, energy-intensive industrial activity and the need for transportation to carry goods to customers. China is driving energy demand globally, followed closely by the United States.
