As oil prices have risen, Maine’s three major natural gas distribution companies say they have seen an increase in customers looking to convert their oil or propane heating system to natural gas.

“We expect to see an increase in customers in the coming year. That’s if the price differential stays the same,” said Darrel Quimby, vice president of Maine Natural Gas in Brunswick. Quimby was referring to the significantly lower price of natural gas as compared with oil and propane prices.

Last week, Bangor Gas Vice President Joseph Cote said it costs about half as much money to heat a home with natural gas as it does to heat with propane or heating oil.

An ad Cote ran in the Bangor Daily News on Dec. 29 claimed natural gas, when compared to the price of home heating oil, costs about $1.79 a gallon.

“It can be fairly easy or fairly complex to convert” a home to natural gas, Cote said. “The average residential customer cannot be more than 150 feet from the main distribution line.”

The main natural gas distribution lines travel beneath the major roadways and business districts of Brewer, Bangor, Veazie, Orono and Old Town, Cote said.

Quimby and Cote said they have seen a slight increase in customers in the past year and expect to see more in 2008.

Sheila Doiron, spokeswoman for Northern Utilities in Portland, said that in 2007, her business welcomed nearly 200 new Maine residential customers and 75 new commercial customers. In addition, four large industrial customers became full-time, rather than “dual-fuel,” customers.

About 80 percent of Maine homes are heated with oil, while 10 percent use propane, 5 percent use wood and 5 percent use natural gas, according to the state Office of Energy Independence and Security.

Nationwide, more than half of all homes use natural gas as their main heating fuel, according to the Federal Energy Information Administration.

“The growing demands in New England for natural gas to fuel space heating in winter months and electric generation year-round has prompted several proposals by private developers to build new liquefied natural gas terminals here and in nearby regions,” the FEIA Web site states. Two such proposed projects include Downeast LNG in Robbinston and Quoddy Bay LNG in Perry.