AUBURN - Residents hoping to join the city's bid in purchasing heating oil for the coming year only have until Monday afternoon to sign up.

The city will take names of residents wanting to participate in the city's heating oil bulk purchase program until 3 p.m. Monday. Those interested should e-mail cwhite@ci.auburn.me.us or call the finance department or the city manager's office at Auburn Hall at 333-6600.

"It's a short deadline, but this needs to happen very quickly," said Laurie Smith, acting city manager. "We were actually ready to go to bid (Thursday), but we've worked with the other participants in our cooperative to delay it. But we do need to act quickly."

Bid participants need to provide their name, the location, size and number of heating oil tanks and the guaranteed quantity of oil they will purchase.

They'll have to meet the oil vendor's payment criteria, which could include a credit check and signing up for automatic oil deliveries. Smith said the list of qualified bidders includes 14 heating oil providers.

The program will be open only to Auburn residents.

It offers to make residents members of the city's bid cooperative, which includes, Lewiston, the Twin Cities schools, Androscoggin County offices and the towns of Poland and Minot. The cooperative typically bids on about 1 million gallons per year.

The bid process will continue for the next few weeks. Smith said she can't guarantee a deal for consumers. It's a pilot program, the first time a municipality has opened its aggregate heating oil purchase to residents.

"We may go out to bid and find that prices are just not tolerable," she said. "We'd continue working on it if that's the case. Or we may accept an offer right away. It's really all market-driven at that point."