Here's an idea if you are worried about your heating bills this winter. The price of natural gas is crashing. The price decreases last week continued a down trend that's gone on for six months. Why? The economic downturn slows demand for gas and many companies are announcing layoffs and closing plants around the country. Reduced prices for natural gas are also a result of growing capacity in the U.S. because of increases in production at new fields. Natural gas prices are at multi-year lows falling from 65% from more than $13.31 per MMBtu (the way gas is measured) in July 2008 to under $5 -- the lowest since October 13, 2006.

United States Natural Gas (NYSE: UNG) is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that reflects the price of natural gas in the United States. UNG attempts to mirror the performance, net expenses, of natural gas at the Henry Hub, Louisiana.

Want to hear about one bright spot on the energy horizon? It's natural gas, for now, at least.

While oil's price has soared in 2007, natural gas' price has actually declined -- you heard that right, declined -- in 2007, from $8.90 / million btu on Dec. 31 2006 to $7.93 / million btu as of Nov. 12, 2007.

In fact, on a per energy unit basis - - or how much energy one can buy for a $1 - - natural gas is about half the price of oil. That's good news for utilities that operate natural gas-fired electric generation plants and homeowners who heat by gas. The situation represents an energy-sector turnabout, of sorts: in 2005, scarce gas supplies and a cold winter caused natural gas prices to spike well above the energy-equivalent price for oil. Homeowners who heated by gas - - most of whom could not switch quickly to another energy form - - were hit especially hard that year.

What's driving the oil/natural gas energy split? Independent Energy Trader Jim Dietz told BloggingsStocks that natural gas' lack of portability is a big factor. Unlike oil, natural gas isn't transported from hemisphere-to-hemisphere the way oil is: i..e. oil can go wherever the global market says the price is highest, Dietz said. Natural gas is consumed regionally. Hence, when regional demand is high, "that leads to quicker price rises for natural gas, but also when demand drops, quicker price reductions," he said. The latter is the case now, he said.

Dietz cautions that a hot summer in the U.S. could quickly reverse the current trend, so homeowners "should not consider natural gas the permanent energy winner, when deciding to heat by natural gas or oil, if they have the choice." "Solar, wind, the home's efficiency rating, and the availability of an energy form in your area of the country" should also be considered, Dietz added.

It is unclear how deeply the New York pressure against trans fatty acids and hydrogenated oils is going to affect our dietary and investment landscape. Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) sure jumped up in a hurry to change its ways and KFC a division of Yum Brands (NYSE:YUM), dropped its trans fat ingredients shortly after it was legally taken to task about them. How is this whole scenario going to affect Altria Group (NYSE:MO) and Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT)? If investors who have money tied up with the providers and users of trans fatty oils aren't taking a hard look at their portfolios, well in my opinion, they had better.

I don't think this is going to be a situation taken lightly. As a matter of fact, I see a rather nasty avalanche on the horizon. How long do you think it's going to be before some poor 300-pound soul is going to team up with some sloppy lawyer who has more time than guts and the two of them class- action this thing in a manner similar to the tobacco debacle of the 80s? If you don't think it's going to happen, then I think you need to get out more often.

I imagine there have been some heated meetings in the board rooms of companies who manufacture and market that stabilized oily junk. What do you think they're going to do, keep making it and hope the noise will die down? That will be the game plan of the lame and blind among our corporate food leaders. I guarantee you the bright ones are making hydrogenated exit plans right now.

Does this signal a pitiful writhing death for trans fatty oils? Not if you have an imagination and a couple usable gonads to go with it. How about having someone develop a home-heating system that utilizes the stuff as fuel? It's safe, stable, biodegradable (outside the body), and it even smells good when it burns. Have you ever burned a potato chip? Hey man, that's for real BTUs!!! When you take the components of hydrogenated oils and separate them you have umm, hydrogen and oil. Do you see what I'm getting at?

So don't give up on hydrogenated oils completely, but guard yourself and your investment dollars with care. If your portfolio is laden with trans fats and your companies are exhibiting a wait-and-see attitude, you need to find out if they have alternate plans. If you think this new move to cut fats from your diet will be short lived or quiet, you could be in for more than one kind of heart attack.

The following definitions are courtesy of Answers.com:

Hydrogenated oil: Unsaturated liquid vegetable oil that has had hydrogen catalytically added so as to convert the oil to a hydrogen-saturated solid.

Trans fatty acid: An unsaturated fatty acid produced by the partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils and present in hardened vegetable oils, most margarines, commercial baked foods, and many fried foods. An excess of these fats in the diet is thought to raise the cholesterol level in the bloodstream.