AUBURN – Roughly 400 residents have agreed to take part in the city’s aggregate heating oil purchasing program.

City Manager Laurie Smith said her staff was still tallying the number of requests and the amount of oil reserved by the pilot program, but estimated each person that signed up agreed to buy about 1,000 gallons.

“We’ve had a flood of phone calls today, not just from residents but from media and from people outside of the city,” Smith said. “We’ve had a half dozen people just answering phone calls and taking orders from people.”

Now the city and its cooperative partners – Lewiston, the Twin Cities schools, Androscoggin County offices and the towns of Poland and Minot – will begin taking bids to lock in a price.

“It’s a pilot program, so we’re going to find out just how well it’s going to work,” she said.

Auburn and its partners usually purchase more than 1 million gallons of heating oil each year and try to lock in a low price in the spring.

Councilors decided to let residents in on the deal, hoping that the increased buying power would help both residents and the cities lock in a cheaper price. Councilors made the idea public at last week’s meeting and adopted it on the spot.

Smith said there will be two prices, one for the cities – with massive storage tanks – and another for residents, with smaller residential tanks.

“The best price we can get is for oil that is delivered by the tanker,” Smith said. “Vendors tend to charge more for the smaller tanks because it costs them more to deliver.”

And residents hoping to participate will have to meet the oil vendor’s payment criteria, which could include a credit check and signing up for automatic oil deliveries.

“But at the very least, we’re providing a level of buying expertise that most residents don’t have,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll get the residents the very best price.”

But Smith said she doesn’t have clue what that price will be. Maineoil.com, a Web site that tracks the price of heating oil, listed the average gallon price in the Lewiston-Auburn area at $4.17 per gallon.

“The best price we’ve heard of from cities that have done their oil bids already was $3.64 per gallon,” Smith said.

The bid process will continue for the next few weeks.