If you heat with oil, the number you need to know is $5.70 a gallon.
That is what a gallon of home heating oil averaged across Pennsylvania this week, according to HomeHeat, the price comparison service that tracks 110 suppliers in 26 counties. In Fayette County, just over the hill from us, oil sold for $4.45 a gallon on August 10. By September 14 it was $5.70, a 28 percent jump in five weeks. Nearly 10 percent of that came in the second week of September alone.
Somerset County is not on HomeHeat’s list, which tells you something about how few suppliers are left running trucks out this way. But a gallon of oil does not care which side of the county line your furnace sits on.
Here is what the jump means at the tank. A 275-gallon fill that ran about $1,225 in early August now runs about $1,570. If you have the bigger 500-gallon tank that a lot of the older farmhouses around here carry, you are looking at roughly $2,850, about $625 more than the same fill would have cost you six weeks ago. Most households burn through more than one fill in a winter up here.
We wrote back in July that the war with Iran was pushing heating oil up. That is still true, and it has gotten worse since. Crude has run past $100 a barrel, but the bigger story now is diesel, which is the same product as heating oil under a different name. Ukrainian drones have been hitting Russian refineries and export terminals all summer. Patrick De Haan, the petroleum analyst most quoted on this, figures 60 to 65 percent of the recent spike traces back to those strikes. American refineries are running at 97 to 98 percent of capacity and shipping diesel overseas at a good price, which leaves less of it here. Diesel has gone from $3.81 a gallon before the Iran war to $6.29 this month.
None of which helps anybody on Kingwood Road in January.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association expects the average oil-heated household to spend about $2,300 this winter, up 31 percent from last year. Only about 4 percent of American households heat with oil, and three quarters of them are in the Northeast, which is a polite way of saying nobody in Washington is going to notice this the way they notice gasoline.
Waiting has not worked so far this year. Prices usually soften in late summer, which is when the careful shoppers around here have always topped off. This summer they climbed instead. If your dealer offers a pre-buy or a budget plan, this is the year to ask what the terms are before you sign, and to ask whether the price is capped or locked. There is a real difference between the two.
For anyone who is going to be short, the state’s heating assistance program opens Monday, November 2, and runs through April 23. Cash grants run from $200 to $1,000 and go straight to your fuel dealer, not to you, and you do not pay them back. There is also a crisis grant of up to $1,000 for a household that has run out of fuel or has a furnace that has quit. You do not have to be on public assistance to qualify, and renters are eligible along with homeowners. The income line is $23,940 a year for one person and $49,500 for a household of four, with $8,520 added for each additional person.
Apply online at compass.state.pa.us starting November 2, call the state helpline at 1-866-857-7095, or go through the Somerset County Assistance Office at 164 Stayrook Street in Somerset. The office number is 814-443-3681 and the heating assistance line is 814-443-3683. Anyone who received a grant last season should watch the mail for an application with a registration number on it, which lets you file early.
It has been a long year on the mountain already. The August flood is still being cleaned up, the Foodmart is still closed, and now the furnace is going to cost more to feed. If you have a neighbor who lives alone, or one who has been quiet since the water came through, it would not hurt to ask sometime this fall how they are set for the winter. A cord of wood and a phone call have gotten this town through worse.