Warning! Winter Gas Bill Alert

It's time for all of us to be forewarned about this coming winter's heating bills. This is not to blame anyone, especially ONG or your local gas utility. It's just to let you know about what is now happening and how it will affect your utility bills.

We are nearing the end (end of October) of the current year injection cycle for natural gas. As a nation, during the low natural gas demand months of May through October all the excess production from producing gas wells is injected into underground storage. It is assumed that 3 to 3.2 trillion cubic feet is the needed amount in storage at the end of the cycle to get us through a typical winter. You can monitor the storage numbers here. Even with the disruptions caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it looks like we will get to at least 3 trillion. That's good news.

The bad news is that it has been injected into storage all during the injection season at $10-$13 per MMbtu, more that double the price from last year, when it was injected at $5-$6 per MMBtu. Tack on the storage charges on top of this. The result is that your local gas utility will be withdrawing this gas during the winter and charging you the cost at that time. Your gas utility bills could be at least doubled from last year's.

What can we do? Lot's of things. But you better get on them now. You can go to an average payment plan if your utility company offers it. That will smooth out the bumps temporarily. You can caulk, weatherstrip, add storm doors, storm windows,and add insulation. Consider a heat pump or some other type of secondary electric heating. The electric prices are at their lowest during the peak winter months. Consider changing out old and inefficient central heaters that can only produce 50% efficiency for a new one with 80% efficiency. Turn down the thermostat on your gas heater and wear more clothing. Turn down the thermostat on your gas water heater. These things should keep you busy.

The point is that its coming and you can do things now to soften the blow.

Tulsa Interfaith Alliance - True to their creed?

Tulsa recently had a forum to discuss the role of religion in public schools. You can see a brief article from the KOTV website here.

The event was hosted by the Tulsa Interfaith Alliance. Here is an excerpt from their purpose statement, "Tulsa Interfaith Alliance is an organization of individuals. It is not actively or passively connected to any specific political, religious, or denominational group.
It refuses to accept financial support from any political action groups, nor will it act as a Political Action Committee to promote the exclusive political agenda of any group." This looks like they say they take great pains to eschew the political arena. The funny thing is, can there be any more political entity that the public schools? It is raw politics at the local level.

Reading that statement again makes me think of what someone else has said, "those who stand for nothing, will fall for anything". Or maybe we could paraphrase and say that an organization that believes in nothing will espouse anything. It may all sound good, but you peel the onion back a little and see that it a front for the banners of diversity and multiculturalism.

I wonder if the U.S. culture needs fixing so much, why did all these people from foreign lands come here in the first place? Why not choose to blend into our melting pot culture to enrich and enhance it? See this for my thoughts exactly.

This forum will do nothing to improve the education of students in Tulsa. While it did promote communication (a good thing), the comments from some on the KOTV article show that seemingly prominent citizens know nothing about our heritage, our culture, our history, and so, sadly, we may be doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past.

Education is taught with a world view. Whose world view will prevail?

The TPS School Board

This is a picture of Matt Livingood, the current President of the Tulsa Public School Board.

I found this link that gives a very good overview of the Board. It includes elections, organization, roles and responsibilities, current members, etc.

Having been the member of a Board myself, I really do respect each of these Tulsa citizens for their involvement and committment to public education. It appears that several of the current Board were elected just this year. Let's hope they bring a fresh and innovative perspective to the direction of TPS, the state's largest school district.