Citizens Energy Oil Heat Fund Gets $40,000 Donation
BNY Mellon’s donation to Citizens Energy will help 150 households heat their homes. (image: smsold.com and energyandutilityconference.org)
CNN Money reported yesterday that BNY Mellon has donated $40,000 to Citizens Energy, a Boston area non-profit that delivers heating oil to elderly and low-income households in Massachusetts through its Oil Heat Fund. The Mellon grant is expected to provide fuel for at least 150 households through the winter.
Citizen’s Energy is perhaps best known for its controversial partnership with Citgo-Venezuela. Citgo is the American distribution outlet for Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Some say that the program is a pulpit for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s socialist politics, as well as a vote-getting strategy for the Democratic politicians involved. However, in 2006, when 13 US senators petitioned all of the major oil companies for help supplying heating oil to low-income residents, Citgo was the only company to step forward.
In any event, the support of programs like Citizen’s Energy will be needed this winter, as applications for state heating assistance, usually supplied through Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) programs, are up across the northern states. In Vermont alone, applications for the winter are expected to exceed 27,000 households for the season, 1,000 more than last year’s record, even though the price per gallon for home heating oil has halved since then.
