Heating oil reached $6.27 a gallon in New York and $6.15 in Massachusetts as the winter heating season approached, according to the nation’s energy assistance directors. A year earlier the same fuel cost $3.69 a gallon in New York and $3.52 in Massachusetts. Households that fill a tank are facing prices well above anything they paid last winter.
The figures come from a price release by the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, the association of state directors who administer the federal heating-aid program. Its executive director, Mark Wolfe, said, “These numbers are alarming!”
Prices rose through the late summer
In New York the price climbed from $5.47 a gallon in late August to $6.27 by the week of the release, an increase of 14.7 percent in about a month. In Massachusetts the $6.15 price was 74.7 percent above the $3.52 of a year earlier.
The federal government’s own weekly survey shows the prices holding. The Energy Information Administration’s residential heating oil page lists $6.335 a gallon in New York and $6.116 in Massachusetts for October 12. Its national average was $6.138, up $2.595 from a year ago.
The EIA’s weekly collection runs through the heating season, which it says extends from October through March, so the figures will keep updating through the winter.
Who is facing the bill
NEADA counts 4,355,200 households in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic that heat with oil. New Jersey has the most at 1,329,400, followed by New York with 696,800 and Massachusetts with 679,200. Among them are 1,199,674 low-income households that qualify for the federal heating-aid program, with New York alone accounting for 378,653.
For a retiree on a fixed income, the question is whether to wait or to apply for help before the first delivery. The program is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, which the federal Administration for Children and Families describes as helping low-income households with energy costs. The ACF page points applicants to the LIHEAP Clearinghouse through its “Need Help With Bills” link.
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The association projects the average oil-heated household will spend about $2,627 this winter, up from about $1,746 last winter. In New York the projection is $2,653, up from $1,802, and in Massachusetts $2,870, up from $1,950. The added cost is about $779 per household in the Mid-Atlantic and about $1,000 in New England, and the group puts the extra spending by low-income households across the region at about $1.1 billion. For all Northeast households, total heating oil spending is projected to rise from about $7.61 billion to about $11.44 billion.
What federal forecasters expect
The EIA’s Today in Energy analysis from October 7 forecasts that heating oil will average 34 percent more this winter than last winter. It projects heating oil spending to rise 21 percent, the largest increase of any heating fuel.
The agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook, released October 6, says the roughly 3 percent of U.S. households that use heating oil as their main fuel face prices up more than 30 percent. Those homes are mostly in the Northeast.
Weather is the offsetting factor. The EIA expects a warmer Northeast than last winter, which was relatively cold, and NEADA notes that NOAA expects a warmer winter because of El Niño. NEADA still expects high prices because of global supply shortages, and the EIA ties the rise to reduced global refining that has cut distillate production.
The money gap for fixed incomes
NEADA estimates heating oil costs about 50 percent more than last winter, up from its earlier projection of 31.3 percent. Wolfe said some families may have to skip food or medicine, or lower their thermostats to unsafe levels.
The group also says the Social Security raise expected in January, about 3.6 percent, will not cover the increase in heating bills. For a retiree whose benefit is $2,000 a month, a 3.6 percent raise adds $72 a month, or $864 over a year. NEADA’s projected added heating cost for the average oil-heated household is about $878.
The directors have asked Congress for $3 billion in supplemental emergency LIHEAP funding. Wolfe said, “Families need help now, before the bills start arriving.”
Why supply, not just weather, drives the price
The EIA says higher international prices have raised import costs and increased demand for U.S. exports. U.S. distillate exports rose 20 percent in the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same period of 2025, mostly to Europe, and distillate inventories are expected to be about 11 percent below the five-year average in the fourth quarter.
The Northeast is exposed to that squeeze. NEADA says most U.S. distillate imports come through the East Coast from Canada, which supplied about 95 percent of them in 2024.
A household that heats with oil has no pipeline bill to smooth the cost across the winter, because each fill is bought at the going price. With oil above $6 a gallon in both states in the EIA’s October 12 survey, one delivery costs far more than it did a year ago.
Applying for heating oil help before the first delivery?
At more than $6 a gallon, a single oil delivery can take a large share of a month’s Social Security, and the help available differs by state. A missed application window or a renewal that lapses means paying the full price for the next fill.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit covers heating, cooling and home-repair help for older homeowners, and it comes with an application log and renewal calendar so each program’s dates are tracked in one place. Its 64 pages include a part on utilities and home costs and a yearly routine for keeping the paperwork current.
Get the heating-help guide and renewal calendar for older oil-heat households →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 15 Ways Retirees Are Tapping a Record $14.9 Trillion in Home Equity
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
