PANDORA’S BOX EVERYTHING GOT OUT. THE HOPE IS AT THE BOTTOM. |
THE ONE-WAY DOOR Two houses, one winter, and a heating bill three times apart Heating oil is forecast up 34 percent a gallon. Natural gas is forecast down 9 percent. |
The tank gets filled in October. By then the decision that sets the bill was made decades ago, usually by whoever built the house. |
The Energy Information Administration has published its Winter Fuels Outlook for November through March. |
For homes heated by oil, it forecasts an average of $2,115 across the season. That is 21 percent more than last winter. |
The price per gallon is forecast up about 34 percent. |
| $2,115 TO HEAT AN OIL HOME, NOVEMBER TO MARCH | → | A house on natural gas is forecast at $640 for the same five months, down 9 percent on last winter. |
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Same winter. Same country. More than three times the money. |
The split is lopsided. About 61 million households heat with gas and 57.8 million with electricity. Heating oil is roughly 3 percent of the country. |
Which is why nobody is talking about it. Three percent does not make a headline. |
It makes a winter, though, for the households inside it. Averages are no comfort when you are the exception. |
Electricity sits in the middle and is its own story. Roughly as many homes run on it as on gas. |
Note what is driving the rise. Usage is forecast to fall 9 percent, so the increase is price, not consumption. |
The two fuels move apart because they are priced apart. Heating oil comes off a barrel of crude. Gas comes off domestic production and storage. |
Crude is where this gets uncomfortable. Brent topped $113 this week, a five-month high. |
Behind it: another drone strike on Saudi energy infrastructure, and an Iranian threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz for good. Day 14 of the conflict. |
So the 34 percent was calculated before this week happened. The outlook gets revised monthly through March. |
Forecasts of this kind are built from futures curves, not from headlines. The curve moved this week. |
That does not make the number wrong. It makes it early. |
Here is the part with no handle on it. You cannot change fuel in November. |
A furnace is not a subscription. Swapping one is a capital project with a permit, a contractor and a waiting list. |
Which leaves two levers. The thermostat, and when the tank gets filled. |
Deliveries price at the rate on the day they arrive. Waiting for a better one is a bet on crude falling while you are cold. |
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Gas households have the opposite problem, which is no problem at all. Their forecast fell and their bill is the smaller one to begin with. |
One honest limit. These are forecasts, and weather moves them more than anything written here. |
A mild winter cuts every number in this article. A cold one does the opposite, to all of them at once. |
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EVERY LEAD PASSES BEFORE IT RUNS The One-Way-Door Test |
01 | Can it be undone? Not before spring. The fuel was chosen when the house was built, and the furnace enforces it. | |
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02 | Who is already repositioning? The forecaster. EIA rewrites this outlook every month through March, and crude moved after it was set. | |
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03 | What does being late cost? The spread between today’s delivered price and January’s. Nobody knows that number yet. | |
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THE MOVE · WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME Add up last winter’s heating bills. If you burn oil, put a fifth on top. If you burn gas, take a tenth off. That is the number worth budgeting against now, not in January. These are national averages and forecasts. Your region, your house and the weather all move the figure, in both directions. |
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ALSO GOT LOOSE TODAY | Meta fell about 7 percent despite beating estimates, after saying it would raise more money to fund AI. The Nasdaq lost 2.6 percent. | MONEY |
| Gold slipped to about $4,024 an ounce and the 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.957 percent. | RESOURCES |
| Moody’s reviews France today, with the French 10-year yield sitting near 5 percent. | WORLD |
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WHAT’S LEFT AT THE BOTTOM The furnace is settled. The thermostat is not, and neither is the day the tank gets filled. Two of the three are still yours. WE WATCH THE BOX. |
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