Heating oil up 59% from last winter as winter bills climb

Heating oil averaged $5.91 a gallon in early November, 59% above a year earlier, and the EIA expects oil-heated homes to spend $2,115 this winter, 21% more than last year, while assistance buys fewer gallons than it did.

A 59% jump before winter

The national average price of heating oil was about $5.91 a gallon as of Nov. 9, up about $2.19, or 59%, from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In Maine, the average was about $5.83 a gallon, up about $2.49 from a year earlier, or about 75%, in a state where about 50% of homes rely mainly on heating oil.

Roughly 4.1 million U.S. households use heating oil as their main heating fuel, and close to 3.4 million of them are in the Northeast. The EIA expects heating oil to average $5.26 a gallon across the winter, 34% above last winter, and forecasts that the average oil-heated household will spend $2,115 from November through March, about 21% more than last year.

Homes heated mainly with natural gas are expected to spend an average of $640 this winter, down 9%, while those using propane are forecast to spend an average of $1,246, down 3%, and households using electricity for heating are expected to spend an average of $1,196, up 4% from a year ago.

Aid that buys fewer gallons

The average benefit through the Home Energy Assistance Program is about $750 per household this season, up from roughly $550 a year ago, but it buys fewer gallons than last season's smaller benefit, said Jason Parent, chief executive of AVEC Community Action, a nonprofit in Presque Isle, Maine. The program began taking calls for emergency fuel aid on Nov. 2, and in the first hour alone there were 150 voicemail messages on its emergency fuel line.

Maine and tribal grantees in the state received about $38 million from the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program in October, and AVEC administers about $4 million of that. For Catherine Lafleche, 65, of Hersey, Maine, the help is a lifeline: guardian to two grandchildren, she lives mostly on about $1,100 a month in Social Security benefits and is $6,000 short of income at this point in the year.

Lafleche ran out of heating oil in early October and kept part of her house warm with a small wood stove, burning boxes collected from other local residents because she did not have enough firewood. In late October, a charitable donation covered 100 gallons of heating oil. 'When the oil man came, I cried,' she said.

A reserve loan and a funding fight

The Trump administration said it would lend 300,000 barrels of heating oil from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, under contracts awarded on Nov. 4, the Energy Department said. The fuel goes to four companies, which must return the same volume plus a premium before the 2027-2028 heating season, and the loan amounts to nearly a third of the 1-million-barrel reserve, Reuters reported.

Whether the extra fuel lowers prices for residents depends at least partly on how it is handed out, said Jonathan Rubin, director of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. If distributors release it in one month, it would be about 10% to 12% of a single month's supply; spread over the whole season, it would be only about 1.5% of the season's supply. 'I would say that this is a modest short-term buffer,' he said.

Lawmakers have called for more heating assistance funding: dozens of House members signed an Oct. 14 letter seeking an additional $3 billion in emergency funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The government released roughly $3.63 billion nationwide on Oct. 9, about 90% of the roughly $4 billion available under the stopgap funding federal agencies. If Congress passes neither full-year funding nor another stopgap by Dec. 11, a federal shutdown would begin.

Sources

• CNBC, 2026-11-14
• EIA, 2026-10-06