Unlike the price of electricity, the rate BGE homeowners pay for natural gas floats each month according to the wholesale market. For electricity BGE buys all its juice for many months and so changes the price less often. For gas BGE passes the market price to households each month. The price BGE customers will be paying for November natural gas was posted today: 92.08 cents per therm, up 8 percent from the October price.

Natural gas prices always rise in the winter with heating demand. They'll probably go up some more in December unless November is very warm. But they aren't as high now as they were after the Hurricane Katrina shortage, when BGE gas prices hit $1.63.05 per therm (Nov. 2005). Even so, they're higher now than they were at this time in 2006. BGE's price in November 2006 was 72.3 cents per therm. The highest prices got last winter was in January, when they hit $1.03.73 per therm. And I suspect -- but haven't done the research -- that heating with natural gas will still be cheaper than heating with oil this year.