AUGUSTA – Mainers are questioning high energy prices and some are looking to the Attorney General’s Office for answers.

“There have been complaints,” said assistant Attorney General Francis Ackerman Wednesday. “Not a flood – more of a trickle – but they are there,” he added.

Ackerman specializes in energy issues for the office. He said most callers have asked about the disparity in petroleum product prices found in northern Maine when compared with the rest of the state.

The State Planning Office’s most recent heating fuel price survey found No. 2 heating oil selling for as low as $1.85 per gallon in the southwestern area of Maine, while a high of $2.08 was posted in the Downeast region. Kerosene had a 5-cent split, from $2.29 in the south to $2.34 in the north.

Gasoline and diesel fuel prices tend to be wider apart. In the Lewiston-Auburn area, regular unleaded could be found for as little as $1.99 per gallon on Wednesday. In Aroostook County, the same gallon of gasoline could cost $2.20.

While complaints about higher prices for fuels north of Bangor aren’t new, Ackerman said the “unexplained discrepancies” continue to be of interest.

He said that it’s the policy of the Attorney General’s Office “to neither confirm nor deny that we are conducting an investigation.” Ackerman acknowledged that, “I am intrigued.”

He also said the office is monitoring the efforts of the Maine Oil Dealers Association and the New England Fuel Institute to review futures trading policies at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

That’s the place where crude oil, gasoline, heating fuel and other petroleum products are bought and sold. Deals cut on the exchange form the basis for commodity prices paid by consumers.

MODA and NEFI have questioned trading practices that have resulted in crude oil prices reaching as high as $55 per barrel in October.

Ackerman said the Nymex deals “are very well worth looking into.”

Should the review by MODA and NEFI find anything worthwhile, he added, Maine would be interested in pursuing changes that might bring about oil price stability in the state.

He said that since the exchange is located in New York, Maine would “not be actively involved in an investigation, but would follow it closely.”

Typically, he said, the lead in that instance would go to the New York attorney general’s office. Maine would act as a partner with that office in relation to any actions that would affect this state, Ackerman said.