When it comes time to stoke up the furnace this fall, most home heating customers in the region won't have any choice about where to buy natural gas.

Alternative suppliers who predicted the state's 1999 gas deregulation act would help customers escape the captivity of their local utilities have largely backed away from the market, according to the region's utility companies and the state's consumer advocate.

The reasons for the lack of competition are complex. First, alternative suppliers lost a tax advantage they had when deregulation first began and some upstart suppliers have gone out of business.

Second, arrangements some utilities offer competitors for delivering their gas often are either too complicated or costly, nonutility executives said.

Third, utilities are obliged under state law to purchase gas under terms that can be hard for other marketers to beat.

The drop-off of suppliers willing to serve residential customers in the region -- which, in the early days of deregulation, stood out as the most competitive market in the state -- comes as gas utilities here and elsewhere in Pennsylvania are planning for October price increases on natural gas for home use.

The decline in competition for residential gas customers, which has been occurring almost since deregulation was enacted, also comes as the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission prepares a mandatory five-year assessment for state legislators on the impact of the deregulation law. The agency gathered public and industry comments last fall. A PUC spokesman couldn't predict when the report would be delivered, but industry insiders expected it before year-end.

At the moment, there are no alternative suppliers offering new contracts to residential customers of Equitable Gas Co. There's only one supplier actively soliciting business among Dominion Peoples Gas Co.'s customers and that supplier, New Jersey-based Suburban Energy Services, is quoting rates higher than Dominion.

Home heating customers in the service territory of the region's largest utility, Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, have a little more choice, but it is from vendors quoting higher rates than the utility is currently charging. (Information about competing suppliers and their prices can be found on the state Consumer Advocate's Web site at www.oca.state.pa.us)

Rather than pitching lower prices, as they did in the early days of deregulation, the few nonutility suppliers still seeking customers are promoting rate stability through annual or multiyear contracts in the face of sharply rising natural gas prices.

Utilities in the state are permitted each quarter to revise the rates they charge for gas to reflect their own costs. If those charges, which are subject to regulatory approval and partially based on projections, prove to be higher or lower than their actual costs, the utilities then are required to make up the difference to customers.

Moreover, state law requires utilities to shop for the cheapest reliable supplies of natural gas.

"It's obviously difficult for the marketers to beat the utilities' price, when [the utilities] don't have a markup," said state Consumer Advocate Sonny Popowsky.

He rejected the suggestion that some utilities had tried to keep competitors out of their captive residential markets.

"I don't think it's a question of them not wanting deregulation to work," Popowsky said, reasoning that without a profit on their natural gas, utilities had no incentive to deter competition. Utilities theoretically make their money only through a regulated markup on the service they provide.

But some utilities in the state haven't made competition easy, alternative suppliers contend.

"It's not that they resist it, it's that they haven't put the energy into making their rules more efficient," said Jeffrey Mayer, chief executive officer of Connecticut-based MxEnergy Inc.

Among other things, some utilities, which often permit competitors to purchase their billing services, either refuse to guarantee customers' payments or do so at a low percentage of face value. Without payment guarantees on the utility bills, competing suppliers would have to do credit checks on every customer, Mayer added.

Competing suppliers also would prefer that utilities be required to adjust their natural gas rates monthly rather than quarterly to more closely reflect actual market prices, Mayer said.

Some utilities counter that not all of the nonutility suppliers' hopes for better terms are realistic.

For example, Equitable Gas spokesman David Spigelmyer said utilities couldn't simply absorb bad debts or the costs of collecting them from customers without charging the competitors who supply them with gas.