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As leaves begin to turn from green to autumn hues of amber, gold, and brown, New England is preparing for an expensive winter.
While most of the country heats their homes with natural gas or electricity, about 5 million households — overwhelmingly located in the Northeast — use oil. Like diesel and gasoline (both of which have set price records recently) home heating oil is distilled from crude oil, which is currently trading at prices not seen since the early months of the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran.
Benchmark oil prices are over $100 for the first time since the spring as the Iran War grinds forward with no end in sight. Houthi attacks on Saudi oil tankers and infrastructure in and around the Red Sea and continued Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries have put added pressure on U.S. facilities to supply the world with gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel, raising prices domestically. Russia’s own fuel imports reached a record 172,000 metric tons in August, according to an analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, mostly from South Korea and India, putting further strain on the global market (the country was once the largest exporter of refined products).
The effects have trickled downstream to the distillate market, as well. Diesel prices surged past $6 per gallon on Friday, while retail home heating oil prices in Maine, one of the Northeastern states most dependent on oil to heat homes, are around $5.39, their highest since April. Making matters worse, stocks of distillate fuel oil, which includes heating oil, are at their lowest level for this time of year since the Energy Information Administration started keeping records. The EIA released a new forecast this week projecting that “global production of distillate fuel will remain below last year’s levels in the coming months, contributing to low U.S. diesel inventories and high diesel prices.”
For Mainers and others across New England, that adds up to a hard winter to come.
“As the most heating oil reliant state in the country, Mainers are uniquely impacted by rising and volatile oil prices,” Acting Commissioner of the Maine Department of Energy Resources Celina Cunningham told me in an emailed statement. About half of the state’s residents “still rely on oil as their primary heating fuel,” she told me, even as outgoing Governor Janet Mills has encouraged heat pump adoption. “The cost of heating oil is already more than 60% higher than it was at this time last year,” Cunningham added, “putting added pressure on Maine households as we head into the winter heating season.”
Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, told me that the total cost of heating a home exclusively on oil will jump from $1,740 to $2,297 this winter. “Families using heating oil will get hit twice — first from gasoline, and then heating oil,” he said.
The price of home heating oil has long been a hot button issue in New England politics, and this year’s slate of Congressional races is no exception. Matt Dunlap, the state auditor and Democratic nominee in Maine’s Trump-voting 2nd Congressional District, told reporters earlier this week while standing in front of a heating oil delivery truck that “right now, families across this district are sitting at their kitchen tables signing their heating oil contracts for the winter and staring at numbers they simply cannot afford.” In keeping with Trump’s recent admonition to pretend he’s on the ballot, Dunlap used the occasion to criticize the president’s foreign policy. The Iran War, Dunlap said, “is not an abstract foreign policy debate. That’s the reason your heating bill this winter could be hundreds of dollars higher than it was last year.”
Susan Collins, the Republican senator running for re-election in Maine, regularly highlights her role in bringing in funding from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for Mainers, even as staff in charge of administering the program were laid off early in the Trump administration.
To the extent New Englanders can expect any relief, it likely won’t come from the supply dynamics of heating oil — the EIA has upped its price forecast for both this year and 2027. They may, however, simply need less. Thanks to what could be an historically strong El Niño, New England may be in for a warmer (albeit wetter) winter than usual.
