New England gets ready for sticker shock next winter as price of heating oil rises

[Bluebear]

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- While people in most of the country may be worried about their summer air conditioning bills, many residents in the Northeast are way beyond that: They're already thinking ahead to next winter's heating bills. And what those who heat their houses with oil are seeing is giving them sticker shock.

Retail heating oil prices have risen to more than $4.50 a gallon, nearly double what they were last year at this time. Some oil dealers have delayed rolling out their payment plans for next winter as the world oil markets continue their wild ride. Consumers -- already on edge with rising gasoline and food prices -- will probably be outraged when they calculate their oil bills for next winter, said Jamie Py, president of the Maine Oil Dealers Association.

"There'll be sticker shock," Py said. "Nobody knows what the price will do. It could go up or the bubble could burst and it could come crashing back down." The angst over heating oil prices is particularly acute in New England, where a higher proportion of people use oil as their primary heating source than any other region, ranging from more than 75 percent in Maine to about 40 percent in Massachusetts. Of the 7.7 million U.S. households that heat with oil, nearly 70 percent reside in the Northeast, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

William Foss, 61, of Portland, had his heating oil tank topped off Thursday with 115 gallons. At $4.52 a gallon, that ran him about $520 -- the most he's ever paid for heating oil. But he didn't want to wait until fall for fear it'll go even higher, to $5 or $6 a gallon.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080601/heating_oil_prices.html

[rurallib]

1. how many gallons, on average, would someone use?

[fromVT]

2. how much?

Typically a small/well-insulated house might use 600-800 gallons for a winter, while larger/less insulated houses use more like 1500-2000 gallons. Working against New Englanders is the fact that many homes are well over 100 years old or older, with old windows, all kinds of insulation issues, etc.

We decided to buy a new wood stove and stock up on wood for the winter, hoping to keep our oil prices down. Last winter we spent $3000 keeping the house at 68 degrees. It was a particularly hard winter, with a huge amount of snow, and it was pretty cold a lot of the time -- way worse than the previous winter. A similar winter this year would be $6000 or more for heating. If it's a less severe winter, maybe it will cost a little less than that, but I can't imagine it will be "only" $3000. Instead, we'll put $3000 into a wood stove and at least have an asset at the end of this.

And stimulus checks? All of the New Englanders I know are putting them straight into their oil tanks.

My father was amazed that some people really had to choose between heating their homes and eating. It's absolutely a reality, getting worse each winter. We have some fuel assistance programs here, which are actually pegged to those making some money (you're ineligible if you make nothing), but Dubya's administration keeps cutting funding for LIHEAP and the number of people needing it keep going up.

[DemReadingDU]

3. from the link in the op: 750 gallons, but

While people can't control the price of oil, they can try to cut their consumption. Judy Dorsey of Gardiner halved her oil use last year by making improvements to her home, which was built in 1850.

After an energy audit of her house, she used a low-interest loan from the Maine State Housing Authority to have her walls and attic insulated, new windows installed, and cracks and holes filled in her foundation, attic and heat ducts.

She used 350 gallons of heating oil last year, compared with 750 gallons two years ago, saving her hundreds of dollars. She'll save even more this year.

[rurallib]

4. Thanks to both of you.

[lse7581011]

23. Last Year I Burned

800 gallons that I paid $2.39 for this year my dealer wants $4.70 per gallon!

[kestrel91316]

5. Time to stop heating entire houses, and start heating

"winter living quarters", meaning the living room, dining area, and kitchen. Close off the rest of the rooms, and keep a space heater in the bathroom so the pipes don't freeze.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

[Bluebear]

7. EXACTLY what I do. We call it the "winter den". nt

[kestrel91316]

9. Heck, I'm gonna have to do it here in my virtually uninsulated

apartment here in Los Angeles. I'll move the TV in to the bedroom, and hang out there all evening........

It gets surprisingly cold here in the San Fernando Valley in the winter. This past January broke all sorts of records.

[Tesha]

21. 'Tough to do in all those house with single-pipe "series" hot water heat.

Back in the oldest dys, when the heat was single-pipe
steam with gravity return of the condensate to the boiler,
you could do it.

Back in the semi-old days (~WWII), when "the pipe" was
a loop around the house but individual radiators only
tapped off a portion of the hot water flow, you could
do it.

But in modern houses, built cheap, all the radiators are
plumbed "in series" and individual radiators *CANNOT*
be shut off. Sucks, but it saved $100 or so when they
built the McMansion or expanded ranch.

Tesha

[Jack_DeLeon]

6. So glad I dont live there...

sure we have to keep the air conditioning running most of the summer but it is possible to survive without it albeit you'd be miserable at times.

[Tesha]

22. The good news is that we in NE will never die of thirst. (NT)

[Rage for Order]

8. Question from a Southerner here

Why is oil still used to heat homes? I had never seen a house heated via oil until one of my sisters moved to Connecticut. Everywhere I've lived it's been electric or natural gas. Is oil more efficient, or is it more of an infrastructure issue, i.e. no gas lines run throughout the cities of the Northeast? Also, is oil used primarily in the Northeast, or is it also used in the Midwest?

[NutmegYankee]

14. Lots of factors.

One factor is the age of the houses. Many were built before the natural gas / electric heat boom. The average age of the older houses in my area is 90 years old. When oil heat took off, it replaced the old coal bins and coal supply chutes in the basements with a shovel free form of heat that could be controlled by thermostat, with more consistent heat and less space used in your basement.

Houses built with this form of heat have basically remained unchanged. My house still has cast iron radiators that use steam (low pressure) produced by a fuel oil burner. My house was built in 1919.

Down south and elsewhere, many homes were converted to natural gas or electric heat when they were retrofit for air conditioning. My house here only has one box unit in the bedroom, which I almost never use. Yes, I really do go without Air Conditioning all summer long. My best guess is that the lack of need for Central Air has stopped the conversion of many homes here. I myself would hate to loose the gurgle of my cast iron radiator heat in the winter. Maybe they make an electric unit that can make my steam.

[fromVT]

19. some of it has to do with our weather

Can't do heat pumps in the northeast -- too cold. Electric is very expensive for heating homes. The natural gas pipelines that feed a lot of the country... well, New England is the end of the line for them, so there's not much pressure, just enough for limited residential service. In rural locations, there aren't any natural gas lines to access.

Generally where I am, it's propane vs. heating oil vs. kerosene vs. wood. If you have a mobile home, it's kerosene as it has a lower freezing point than heating oil, and you usually have no basement, so the tank is outside. Yeah, we occasionally get cold enough that if you have outside fuel storage, it would freeze with heating oil (I think that's -20F). Kerosene is even more expensive than heating oil. Propane is also way up there, and you don't get as much energy out of it in terms of BTU's as you do out of heating oil or kerosene.

Historically, heating oil has been the cheaper/est way to heat outside of wood stoves in my neck of the woods. In fact, it was so cheap that many having a forced hot water heating system had their hot water tank hooked up to the furnace. You'd then run the furnace all summer just to heat water. It was cheaper than an electric hot water heater. No more!

[fight4my3sons]

10. I got a delivery on Thursday

We had a credit from LIHEAP for $644.00 and we told them to just give us what we could get for that amount. It was 143 gallons. We have a 275 gallon tank. So we still aren't full, but we are part of the way there. We are not looking forward to this coming winter.

[AzDar]

11. People. Need. Help.

THIS is why we pay taxes, goddamnit.:mad:

[SammyWinstonJack]

17. The rich who don't worry about such things as having the funds to heat their mansions and

bu$hco's corrupt corprat cronies got the tax breaks.....so no funds for those who really need taxpayers' assistance. EAT THE RICH!

[roguevalley]

12. this makes me sick. of course though, no place in America has it

as bad as Barrow, Alaska. Milk alone there costs $8.99 a gallon. As of yesterday. gulp. :wow:

[Marrah_G]

13. I cannot even put into words how scared I am

[Bluebear]

15. For the a.m.

[spinbaby]

16. We're very worried

Our house is well insulated and we keep the heat down, but we still use around 500 gallons during the winter. There's no place to put a wood stove and we're not sure we're up to the work required. We've looked into a pellet stove for supplemental heat, but don't have a place to put that, either. We have a non-functioning fireplace, though, so we're planning to put in one of those electric fake fire screens that's also a radiant heater. That way we can at least huddle in the living room.

[MountainLaurel]

18. $600/month in Portland, ME

To heat a 1400 square-foot Cape Cod to about 66 degrees, from mid-October into April (when we moved).

[KillCapitalism]

20. I would never live up in the northeast.

Wow @ your heating oil costs & crazy winters.

You north easterners should check out Phoenix.

[mainegreen]

25. I'll take the wonder of winter over your oppressive summer any day.

;)

I experienced 117 ONCE, and it was in Phoenix.

I'll take zero F any day.

[NotThisTime]

24. I have a big house for sale, can't sell it & won't heat it ~1400 gallons of oil a year :(

We're going to have it winterized, water pipes emptied & the house will have no heat.... with any amount of luck we'll sell the place but I'm not holding my breath, there's nobody to even look at it.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

26. On CNBC this morning: "commodities are the place you want to be"

They were commenting about the financial stocks and how they were suffering and they recommended that investors buy oil futures and other commodities. Just before that, they had a commentator on who said that the rise in oil prices is only due to supply and demand and not to speculation at all. He was adamant. So how does that explain that in early 2007, a little more than one year ago, the price of a barrel of oil was under $60 whereas today it's flirting with $130? In one year, did demand double? Are there twice as many cars on the road today in the world as there were one year ago? Are people heating twice as many homes today as they did one year ago? Are people driving twice as far today as they did one year ago? I don't get how they pin everything on supply and demand on networks like CNBC and tell us that speculation has nothing to do with it. Do they think we're completely stupid?

[democrank]

27. Just paid $531.25 for 125 gallons of kerosene.

Lots of folks hurting here in Vermont.

[MANative]

28. We used about 1200 gallons this winter - keeping the

thermostat set at 60 most of the time, and boosting it to 65 for about 2 hours a day. Sadly, another big house that wouldn't sell. With current prices estimated to be about $4.50/gallon - that looks like about $5400 for heating next winter. Ain't gonna happen. We're looking into buying a pellet stove, which will probably cost around $2500 to buy and install, and about $900 to operate for the year. Still looks like a "savings" of about 2 grand over oil. I'm sure that the price of pellets will be soaring soon, too. :grr: