Students feel heat from
high gas bills
By Dave Stephens
Assistant
Campus Editor
Jason Shuler is trying to save money for his wedding.
But Shuler, a senior in the School of Technology,
said that with the rising cost of heating his house, he won't be able
to save as much money as he had planned on.
"Any extra money I used to be able to save now
has to go to the gas bill," said Shuler. "It is not a bill I really
enjoy paying."
Shuler's heating bill, and those of many other
students who use natural gas, has gone up this year due to an increase
in demand and a low supply. According to the Energy Information Administration,
the average cost for heating a household this winter will increase by
44 percent.
But a 44 percent increase was not a part of many
students' plans.
Wendy Baker, a junior in the School of Liberal
Arts, said that she was probably going to have to get a job to help
pay the bills.
"The bill was just so large, we've all started
wearing more sweatshirts and some of my roommates have had to cut back
on the amount of food they buy," said Baker.
Shuler said that he expected the heating bill to
go up due to the cold winter weather, but that he didn't think it would
be that much of an increase.
"Our gas bill for half of October and half of November
was $25, so I expected it to go up," said Shuler. "Our November-December
gas bill was $160 and I thought that was a little high. But When we
got our gas bill this month we we're kind of in shock. It was for December-January
and it was $230. We weren't even here for the three weeks over break."
Shuler said that he and his roommates don't have
the extra money for such a large bill and that their next month's bill
will be even higher.
"We'll have to keep our thermostat at 60 degrees,"
said Shuler, "and hopefully we can scrape enough money together to pay
for our heat."
Purdue University has also been experiencing a
slight price increase in the cost of heating its many buildings, but
by burning coal instead of natural gas, much of the price increase has
been avoided.
"Only one percent of what we burn is natural gas,"
said Erick Vanmeter, power plant manager of Purdue's Wade Power Plant.
"All the buildings on campus, except for those by the Purdue Village,
the airport and Mollenkopf, are heated by the steam we produce."
Vanmeter said that the buildings not heated by
steam were being affected by the price increase in natural gas but that
the extra cost of heating them would not affect their budgets much.
Dan Schuster, a mechanical engineer at the Wade
power plant, said that Purdue's ability to buy gas up to three years
in advance helps to avoid the cost of rising prices.
"We've developed a risk management policy —
if we feel gas prices are going to go up, we're able to buy gas at a
better price. The only problem is once you buy the gas, there's nothing
to say that the price won't go down," said Schuster.
Schuster said that the only real cost increase
they have noticed is the cost to transport the coal to the plant.
"When the natural gas prices go up, you have to
pay for an increase in transportation cost because the price of diesel
fuel has gone up," said Schuster.
Even though Purdue is surviving the increase in
the price of natural gas, Schuster said that not all universities are
so lucky.
"There are other universities that are much more
reliant then we are on natural gas," said Schuster. "If the prices stay
high, it could result in a budget crisis for some of them."
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