HARTFORD — An effort by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to reshape energy policy with incentives to boost efficiency and keep down costs has drawn opposition from the home heating oil industry, which accuses the state of encouraging residential and business customers to dump local oil suppliers in favor of increasingly popular natural gas.
It’s shaping up as a David-and-Goliath struggle between family run home heating oil companies stung by skyrocketing oil prices and the state and its regulated gas utility monopolies.
“They’re using state resources to eliminate jobs, delivery drivers, customer service representatives,” said Stephen G. Rosentel, president of Leahy’s Fuels Inc., a family owned home heating business that has operated in Danbury since 1917. “These are real jobs and real people, and they matter.”
