By Stephen Brun stephen.brun@peicanada.com Home-heating customers will benefit from lower prices for budget payment plans in the New Year, with the potential to see money returned to them from some oil companies. Oil prices have dropped dramatically from record highs over the past year, and some local companies said they’ll drop rates for 10 or 12 month payment plans. On the budget plans, customers can lock into a specific price for their oil, but were previously more likely to owe money to the company at the end of the payment period when oil prices were higher than the locked-in rate. With the recent dip in oil costs, Bill Lewis, manager of Co-op Fuels on the Island, said customers can call the company to re-adjust their rate, but could also see a refund or credit at the end of their budget period if they choose to continue to pay at a higher rate. "They can call (to re-adjust) at any time. It varies from customer to customer," he said. "Budget plans are based on prices from the current year, so when it goes from $1.27 a litre last year to 69.6 cents a litre today, it’s quite a difference." Co-op’s budget plans run from September to June, and Mr Lewis said many customers owed money from the last payment period depending on the individual rates that were negotiated for each consumer. Any money that’s owed at the end of the budget year can be used as a credit against future payments, or a cheque can be issued directly to the customer, Mr Lewis said. David MacInnis, owner of MacInnis Fuels in Souris, said his company hasn’t changed any customer rates to reflect the lower prices, but some customers may qualify for some type of refund in the spring. “There are no changes at this point. Only a handful of customers are on monthly payment plans anyway,” Mr MacInnis said. “It’s pretty much on par right now but I didn’t increase payments from last year either. There are big changes this time because it never used to (fluctuate) more than a couple cents, now it’s 10 cents every time.” While some companies don't plan to make changes or leave the decision up to the individual customers, Mike Hennessey, general manager of Island Petroleum, said his company will contact all of their budget plan customers and inform them of an automatic price decrease when they re-evaluate prices in January. “I would guess the decrease would be substantial. It’s hard to make a prediction, but you could be looking at a difference of 30-40 per cent,” he said. “We’re just going into the high-consumption months, so we’ll be lowering the prices before that happens. Nobody knows, you’re just taking a stab. In August it was at an all-time high, so if anyone would’ve said the prices were going where they did, I don’t know if we would have believed them.” While most of the companies said global oil markets are impossible to predict, Mr Lewis said it’s unlikely customers who lock in at a lower rate now will be left with large extra payments if costs go up again. “I really doubt the prices are going to go back to the levels of last summer, but it’s hard to predict what you’re going to see from month to month.”