The price of home heating oil has fallen significantly, according to the Energy Information Administration. It’s down to $4.47 a gallon this week after hitting a record high of $5.93 per gallon in November.
That’s a little piece of good news for some homeowners and renters — especially in the Northeast, where a lot of people use it to heat their homes.
We’ve got about six more weeks of winter (if the groundhog is right, anyway). So far, it’s been a relatively mild one.
“Now, that’s not to say we don’t have cold snaps,” said Hugh Daigle at the University of Texas at Austin. “Obviously in the Northeast, there was a very severe cold snap very recently. But in general, the temperatures are higher.”
That means people who heat their homes with oil are using less of it this year, and it’s a big reason the price has come down.
Another reason is that crude oil prices have been falling. “Heating oil is a refined product that comes from crude oil,” said Ryan Kellogg at the University of Chicago. “So those prices are going to move at least somewhat in sync.”
But even though heating oil has dropped, “it’s still expensive,” said Mark Wolfe at the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.