Increased gasoline prices have punched Lisa Bradford, of Martinez, in the pocketbook.

Add the expected increase in natural gas prices, Mrs. Bradford says, and it's going to make things even more difficult.

"Well, gas is going up, and so is power," she said. "It doesn't seem to be canceling out like it used to."

The effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will be felt well into the winter, as oil and natural gas production have been hit hard.

The U.S. Department of Energy expects market prices for natural gas - the price paid at the pipeline before it reaches consumers - to increase between 37 percent and 50 percent from last year.

David L. Fox, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for Home Energy Assistance, said natural gas prices and prices for home heating oil are expected to go up 30 percent to 50 percent from last year.

In some places, prices will increase 70 percent, he said.

"It's going to be a very, very difficult time," Mr. Fox said.

The hurricanes, especially Katrina, damaged infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico used to pump and process natural gas, the Energy Department says. Even before Katrina, the infrastructure hadn't completely recovered from Hurricane Ivan in 2004, which hit farther east, around Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla.

The potential price increases even have energy companies concerned.

"From this point forward, the heaviest focus we're trying to push is conservation," said Terry Redman, a spokeswoman for Georgia Natural Gas, one of Georgia's natural gas marketers in the state's deregulated market.

"People have heard conservation tips for years and years, and it has gone through one ear and out the other," she said. "Now is the time for people to take these things seriously."

"They feel helpless, and they are," Ms. Redman said. "There's nothing consumers can do about (the prices). There's nothing that the energy companies ... can do about it. It's a result of factors beyond everyone's control."

Officials with the area's local economic opportunity agency - among those started in the 1960s to help run federal social programs on the local level - also are worried about the potential for high natural gas prices.

Many of the nation's elderly and low-income households depend on a program called the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, to pay energy bills.

The program, funded by the federal government and disbursed to the states, helps provide assistance with heating and cooling bills.

Lola Johnson, of the CSRA Economic Opportunity Authority, which oversees LIHEAP applications in Richmond and 12 other Georgia counties around Augusta, said she expects the agency to run through funds quickly.

"It's going to be terrible," she said. "And what's going to make it even worse, we're already encountering people unable to complete their cooling bills."

The agency has been awarded $937,177 for the heating side of the LIHEAP program, for all 13 counties the authority serves, Ms. Johnson said.

Even for those who aren't on fixed incomes, the increases hit pocketbooks.

There's only so much conservation a household can do, said Mrs. Bradford, who works in the Richmond County Clerk of Superior Court's office and gets her natural gas from SCANA.

"There's no other way to do it," she said. "You've got to have hot water, to have clean clothes, to cook."

Reach Jeremy Craig at (706) 823-3409 or jeremy.craig@augustachronicle.com.