Get in a penny-pinching mode.

That’s the advice Aquila officials are giving Lawrence natural gas customers as high oil prices have pushed natural gas prices to record highs.

The wholesale price of natural gas recently hit a new high for August, said George Minter, a spokesman with Kansas City, Mo.-based Aquila, which provides natural gas to 30,000 Lawrence homes and businesses. Market prices for natural gas are between 20 percent and 25 percent higher than they were a year ago.

“Those prices obviously concern us going into the fall and winter,” Minter said Monday.

Aquila customers should notice the increase this month. Minter said the average August bill for residential customers would increase to $30.06, up nearly 9 percent from $27.60 in August 2003. If prices remain high, a 9 percent increase will be more painful for the average customer once cold weather arrives. For example, a 9 percent increase on the average January bill of $174.07 would amount to an extra $15.60.

Aquila officials said it was too early to tell how much gas bills would increase during the fall and winter. But they are reminding people that the best way to limit the increase is to carefully control the amount of gas they use each month.

“Conservation is the key thing for customers,” Minter said. “We don’t know exactly where these wholesale prices will go, but we know you’ll want to conserve as much as possible for the sake of your household budget.”

The company also is touting its StreamLINE level payment plan. The program allows customers to pay the same amount for gas each month based on their average usage during the previous 12 months.

The volatility of oil prices have played a role in the increasing prices of natural gas.

Although the country’s natural gas supply largely doesn’t come from the Middle East, the price of natural gas typically follows the price of oil. Instability in the Middle East has led to record prices for oil. But industry analysts also have warned that this may be the beginning of a long-term trend of rising natural gas prices. That’s because the country’s consumption of natural gas is growing faster than its supply.

Demand has grown, in part, because a desire for more environmentally-friendly power plants has increased the number of plants that use natural gas rather than coal to generate electricity.