Long Islanders are currently forced to pay wartime prices for home-heating oil.

Double-digit increases in the cost of home-heating oil and natural gas act as a regressive tax on low-income families, forcing them to choose between two necessities.

Mr. Rovira moved to Shanghai, established a bottling plant and began pumping wine from truck to tank as if it were home-heating oil.

The decision also suggests strongly that the Court would uphold regulation by states of the price and allocation of other petroleum products, including home-heating oil.

Wholesale home-heating oil dropped 1.87 cents, to 74.30 cents a gallon, for February delivery after a 7.87 cent run-up Monday.

In Westchester, 27,000 households burn home-heating oil, accounting for 21 million gallons combusted each year, he said.

Warm weather in November and the first three weeks of December also has hurt refiners, and helped homeowners, cutting into deliveries of home-heating oil.

So on April 1, Mr. Bentsen lowered the proposed tax on home-heating oil.

An additional 25 percent is diesel or home-heating oil, and about 10 percent is jet fuel.

Oil futures, meanwhile, fell as home-heating oil declined with warming temperatures in Europe.