You asked whether there is a state website where heating oil dealers can post their prices so that consumers do not have to call each company to get price information. If there is no such website, you asked what would be needed to create one.

There is currently no such state website. The energy unit of the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) does track wholesale and retail heating prices at the regional and state levels by surveying a sample of dealers. It posts average, high, and low prices every week from October through March and every month during the rest of the year. OPM provides the information by county (information for Windham and Tolland counties are combined) and the state as a whole. The information is available at an OPM website, www. ct. gov/opm/.

The legislature could expand this website to include price information for individual dealers. If it did, it would need to decide whether to keep the responsibility for maintaining the website in the OPM energy unit, or assign it to the Department of Consumer Protection (DCP, which by law has several responsibilities regarding heating oil dealers), or another entity. The legislature would also need to determine whether to ask dealers to voluntarily provide price information for the website or to require them to do so, perhaps as a condition of the registration with DCP required under CGS § 16a-23m.

The legislature or implementing agency would need to determine how often the website would be updated and what information it would contain. For example, the website could provide the dealer's telephone number, the towns its serves, and whether it has a minimum delivery policy, in addition to price information.

Maintaining the website would require contacts with hundreds of dealers on a regular basis. It is unclear that OPM or the Department of Consumer Protection currently has the staff to do this, which might require an appropriation.

KM: ts