"The consumer, unfortunately, is going to be facing some severe sticker shock when the delivery company fills up their tank to get ready for the colder weather," said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, a consulting firm specializing in refinery operations.
The price surge reflects constrained global supplies of distillates, the category that includes both heating oil and diesel, which are generally the same product. Refinery disruptions in Russia and the Middle East, along with reduced fuel exports from China, have tightened the market, and some analysts expect prices to remain elevated through 2027.
A warmer-than-usual winter could soften the blow. The EIA expects temperatures in the Northeast, where heating oil use is concentrated, to be milder, which should cut overall consumption by about 9% even as spending rises.
Households using other fuels face a different picture. Natural gas heating bills are forecast to average $640, down 9%, propane bills are expected to average $1,246, down 3%, and electric heating is projected to average $1,196, up 4%.
Heating oil serves a relatively small share of US households, about 3%, but use is heavily concentrated in the Northeast, where about 3.4 million households rely on it, roughly 82% of the nation's 4.1 million heating oil households. Actual bills will depend heavily on the weather: colder temperatures increase energy use even if prices stay flat.