Heating oil in Massachusetts averaged $6.23 a gallon in the week of October 19, according to the state’s Department of Energy Resources dashboard. A year earlier the same survey put the price at $3.53. That is a 75% increase in twelve months, on a fuel that roughly 20% of Massachusetts households burn as their primary heat source, per federal data cited by the Boston Globe.
The arithmetic that lands on a kitchen table: a standard tank fill-up now runs over $1,500, an increase of more than $600 from last year. Mary Thomas, a Stoneham social worker, paid nearly $760 for what she called “significantly more” than her prior bill — a partial fill, at that price. Sherman Szeto, a Lynn software engineer, paid $587 for half a tank in September, up about $200, or roughly 52%, from a year earlier.
That regional spike sits inside a national forecast that is, by the government’s own account, uneven across fuels. The EIA’s Winter Fuels Outlook, published October 6, projects an average household heating-oil bill of $2,115 for the five-month season, up 21% from last winter. The 21% is a net of two moving parts: the agency expects the price itself to rise 34%, to a seasonal average of $5.26 a gallon, offset by a roughly 9% drop in consumption on a forecast for a milder Northeast winter, where oil heat is concentrated. Natural gas and propane households — about half the country — are forecast to spend less than last winter, 9% and 3% respectively, while electricity-heated households are projected to pay 4% more. Heating oil is the only fuel category EIA expects to get both more expensive per unit and, on net, more expensive to burn.
| Change vs last winter (%) | |
|---|---|
| Natural gas | -9 |
| Propane | -3 |
| Electricity | 4 |
| Heating oil | 21 |
Source: US Energy Information Administration, Winter Fuels Outlook
Why oil, not gas
The mechanism is structural, not seasonal. Piped natural gas is sold under regulated utility tariffs, with suppliers typically locking in volumes months ahead; propane runs on long-term contracts with dealers who also hedge. Heating oil has none of that. It is delivered by truck from a local dealer who buys distillate on something close to a spot basis and reprices to the retail customer within days of a crude move. That is why Massachusetts’s current $6.23 is already running above even EIA’s own November forecast of $5.79 a gallon — the state figure reflects real deliveries in late October, the federal number is a seasonal average built on an assumption that prices ease every month from November ($5.79) through March ($4.84) as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, constrained by the Iran war, gradually normalizes.
That forecast rests on crude easing too. EIA puts September’s actual Brent average at $114 a barrel and now projects a fourth-quarter average of $105 — itself revised up $14 from its own September forecast, a sign of how fast the input is moving. The agency’s own track record this cycle is one of chasing the number upward, not predicting it. Whether Hormuz traffic actually resumes on the model’s timeline is the open variable the whole monthly price path depends on; treasury markets are already pricing in sustained inflation pressure from the Iran war, which is not consistent with a quiet return to normal shipping by spring.
Electricity is a separate, longer-running story. The US Chamber of Commerce’s electricity price map puts the Massachusetts average retail rate at 25.56 cents per kilowatt-hour, against a 13.63-cent national average — 88% higher — and up 40.52% over five years. Bloomberg’s own calculation, using a different window (2020 to 2025), found a 38% rise; Third Way put it at 41% since 2020. Three measures, three methods, the same order of magnitude: Massachusetts power costs have risen roughly 40% in five years, well before this winter’s heating-oil shock layers on top of it. Governor Maura Healey’s energy emergency declaration this month targets both pressures, temporarily expanding heating-assistance eligibility and cutting electric bills for a few months — a stopgap against a price structure that predates the current spike by years.
The firewood supply chain runs on the same diesel
Demand for firewood has moved earlier and heavier this year. ATH Firewood, in Ashburnham, is booked through the third week of December for kiln-dried orders — normally the company is still working off a stockpile built over spring and summer, but that inventory ran out in September as customers ordered ahead of schedule. The business added two full-time employees to keep up with splitting and stacking.
But firewood dealers face the same crude exposure as oil-delivery customers, one input removed: the equipment that splits and kiln-dries logs runs on diesel and propane, and delivery trucks run on diesel. New England diesel (the EIA’s PADD 1A region) is up roughly 64% year over year, propane about 12%, according to EIA weekly price series. Roger Conner, who runs RC Conner Enterprises in New Hampshire, has raised prices multiple times since the Iran war began: a cord of kiln-dried wood went from $495 to $595, about 20%, and his baseline delivery charge went from $25 to $95, nearly quadrupling. “It’s stressful getting logs, and it’s stressful paying the fuel bill,” he said. “We’re not making any more money.” That is a cost pass-through, not a markup — his own fuel line item ate the increase before it reached his margin.
Chimney sweeps are the second-order business riding the same wave: Master Chimney Sweepers in Natick has booked more jobs this October than in any month since the pandemic, running 30 to 40 sweeps a day as households reactivate fireplaces and wood stoves that have sat unused for years.
The least capital-intensive response is information. Szeto built Tavlee, a site that tracks and compares heating-oil prices from dealers across New England — a market with no public price board, where he says dealers don’t make their rates easy to find. He spends a couple of hours a day verifying price changes by hand; he says thousands of people have used the tool to shop for the cheapest delivery. It is the market’s missing feature, built by a user rather than a regulator, and it only works because oil pricing here is opaque enough that manual comparison shopping is worth the trouble.
EIA’s model has heating oil falling every month from November to March. Massachusetts households are already paying above the model’s first data point in late October. The number to watch is whether Brent actually comes down toward that $105-a-barrel fourth-quarter forecast, or whether the agency revises it upward again, the way it already did once this autumn.