On too many occasions in the last several years, thousands of New Hampshire homeowners have shelled out large sums of money to prebuy an entire season’s worth of heating fuel only to have their oil company go out of business, leaving those customers without oil in the tank or money in the bank.

To its credit, the attorney general’s office has stepped in and worked out restitution arrangements with the oil companies as best it could, but such agreements usually take a long time to play out and provide little immediate help to consumers.

It’s a problem you’d think would be tailor-made for the Legislature. Apparently, you would be wrong.

The prebuy option is a popular one for both sides, because it offers consumers the prospect of stability by locking in a price for the winter, and it provides off-season cash flow and guaranteed sales for the supplier.

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

But it doesn’t work at all if the company goes out of business after collecting the money. Part of the problem is that the futures contracts that are supposed to protect consumers don’t require the companies to put up money for fuel right away, or to buy fuel and store it. Financially strapped companies can collect the payments, spend it on other things and leave consumers in the lurch if the business goes under, as has happened in the past.

House Bill 566 was an attempt to provide some protection for customers in those instances.

Except it won’t. The New Hampshire House is probably going to kill the bill when it meets next month on the recommendation of the House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee. The panel made that recommendation after taking testimony on the bill, which was sponsored by Rep. Donna Schlachman, D-Exeter, in response to well-publicized failures by several oil companies, including Flynn Oil in Exeter.

The problem, it appears, is that nobody really wanted to be part of the solution. Not the oil companies, not the banks, not the state.

A proposal to require oil companies to set up escrow accounts met with resistance from banks and oil companies, who said it would increase costs for prebuy customers and make survival even more tenuous for smaller companies operating on thin margins. Another idea, based on the way they do it in Maine, would have required companies to register with the state, pay a fee and file an annual report of their prebuy contracts. That was rejected by the Commerce Committee because the fee wouldn’t raise enough money to pay for the cost of the state labor required to track the contracts.

"The inability to find a way to protect consumers from these catastrophic business failures continues to be a source of great concern and frustration to many on the committee," the committee said in its report to the full House.

It’s not the first time the committee has tackled the topic and failed to come up with a solution, and we give members credit for perseverance.

But expressions of frustration won’t be much help to customers of the next company that goes under and leaves homeowners in the lurch.

Like we said, it seems like a problem that is tailor-make for the Legislature. Lawmakers just have to decide whose toes they’re willing to step on to make it happen.

Besides consumers, that is.

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