Rarely does the opportunity present itself to attach an exact price tag to principle, but we now know just what it costs to reconcile the state of New Hampshire to "grandstanding" by Venezuela's socialist president Hugo Chavez: $4.68 a gallon for heating oil.

Even more unusually, this is a case where price ought to trump principle, if indeed any valid principle was involved in the first place.

New Hampshire will become the last state in the Northeast to avail itself of heating-oil assistance managed by Citizens Energy Corp., the nonprofit set up by former congressman Joseph Kennedy to help the poor keep warm. The oil, in turn, is donated to Citizens Energy by Citgo, Venezuela's state-owned oil company.

A couple of years ago, some Republicans objected to New Hampshire residents getting free oil from Venezuela, on the grounds that Chavez was seeking to embarrass the United States. The AP reports that Sen. John Sununu called the idea a "disgrace" and that Gov. John Lynch dropped the effort.

However, a new day has dawned. Now Sununu says he has no objection to individuals and businesses accepting help from an independent nonprofit such as Citizens Energy. The state intends to publicize the aid and sign up fuel dealers to participate.

All's well that ends well, but the original "principle" involved deserves further reflection. To begin with, if the government of this country provided adequate fuel aid to its neediest citizens, the opportunity for Chavez to achieve a propaganda coup by donating free fuel oil would be pre-empted. In fairness to Sununu, he has joined other congressmen and senators from the Northeast in pressing for a big increase in federal fuel aid for the coming winter. But we are not confident that whatever they achieve will be adequate to the task.

A second point to consider is why oil from Venezuela was anathema when it was free and directed to the poor but perfectly fine for everybody else to buy. Venezuela supplies about 15 percent of U.S. oil imports, including 10 percent of all gasoline used in America and a large portion of the heating oil used in the Northeast. As Kennedy told BusinessWeek, "People should hold themselves to the same moral standard they're going to hold the poor to. If Chavez is an enemy, then anyone who believes that shouldn't use his oil."

Finally, it's worth wondering why Citizens Energy should be dependent on Venezuela for oil donations in the first place, when so many domestic oil companies are enjoying profits on a vast scale. Here's what Kennedy says: "I wrote to every oil company and asked them to provide us with just a little bit of heating oil so that we could assist the poor. I do it every year. I did the same thing with every OPEC nation and every major crude oil exporter in the world. The only country and only company that wrote me back and actually provided us with over $100 million worth of assistance was Citgo and the Venezuelan people."

Those crafty socialists.