The Northeast’s reliance on heating oil is turning into a crisis — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Heating oil prices have surged to roughly $6/gallon across much of the Northeast, up from mid-$3 in February, driven by Iran-war disruption of the Strait of Hormuz (which once carried about a tenth of global water-borne diesel) and Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries.
- NEADA projects heating costs will rise 50% across the Northeast — $878 per household, $3.8 billion overall — with Vermont and Maine facing a 76% jump, executive director Mark Wolfe calling it 'part of the cost of the war.'
- Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency Monday, boosting assistance to 156,000 low-income households, expanding access to 50,000 middle-class families, activating price-gouging protections, and calling on Congress for an additional $3 billion in LIHEAP funding.
- President Trump has repeatedly targeted the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program for elimination, and the administration temporarily withheld payments last spring; HHS says it will meet the November 1 deadline to release at least 90% of the program's roughly $4 billion.
- A bipartisan group of 31 senators wrote HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month asking that funds be distributed 'well before' the deadline, citing 'extraordinary pressure consumers will face this winter.'
- A House bill introduced last week would add $1 billion to LIHEAP, but action won't happen before midterms, leaving the roughly 1 million low-income heating-oil households with no immediate funding buffer.
- Wolfe of NEADA warned that those low-income families may have to choose between filling their tanks and buying food or medication: 'This could be a public health crisis. The problem is that the administration has said nothing.'
Why it matters: With existing aid buying far less fuel than it did before the war and a $1 billion House LIHEAP boost stalled until after midterms, the more than 1 million low-income heating-oil households face a winter that NEADA's Wolfe calls 'a public health crisis' — and the Trump administration, he says, 'has said nothing.'
Ask SkimNews
