Skip to main content

Price of Oil

Noticing a little relief at the pumps, that relief could be coming to your heating bill too.


those of us that are hoping that this winter will be warmer than last year, are in for another freezing, snowy winter. This would lead most of us to believe that we're going to have huge heating bills to following, for you oil heat customers that might not be the case.



Here in New England we have the highest population of home owners that heat using oil, while 50% of the nation uses Natural Gas, 5% use Oil. The rest of the country is mixed between solar, propane, electric, and other.

Over the past couple of months the price of gasoline at the pumps has been going down, along with any deliveries you may have gotten heading into the season. This is partially due to the demand for oil heated home declining over the years as more homes go to Natural Gas. As this shift continues the price of oil will decline while the problems with natural gas will continue (more on that later). It's a classic situation of supply and demand, as the US oil production boom continues to flood the market and more homes make the switch the Natural Gas, Oil will become cheaper than Natural Gas forcing a shift back to Oil heat.

Natural Gas right now is all the rage, with Government incentives and rebates ranging in the several thousands of dollars.  However the price of Natural Gas is projected to raise this year and supply issues will still affect the North East. Last year when we had one of the coldest winters on record the aging natural gas infrastructure couldn't keep up with the demand. This didn't just affect the price of natural gas but also affected the price of electricity.

The supply chain to get natural gas hasn't been updated or redone in decades and continues to leak Natural Gas due to shifting in the soil.  The pipes are so too small down the chain to supply to the correct amount of natural gas during those sub-zero days and nights when we really need the heat.

As the price of oil continues to drop and the price of natural gas continues to raise, it might make more sense to stick with oil to heat with this winter. Plus oil burns twice as well as natural gas and doesn't contribute as much to greenhouse gases.

by:
Robert Stahelski

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thermostat Tips and Tricks

It's time to lock down the thermostat In many homes now that the temperature has started to dip the thermostat might have become a point of issue. One person in the home wants the house warmer while someone else wants it colder to save on money. The thing that everyone can agree on is that heating your home while no one is there is a waste of energy and money. Programmable and smart thermostat allow you to set an away temperature. With programmable thermostat you have to manually go in to set the time for each day it's suppose to go to "away". Smart thermostats like the Nest learning thermostat learn over time based on a week or so of manual temperature changes. Other smart thermostats including the Nest will go into "away" mode based on a cellphone gps location. The upside of these is never having to manually change the thermostat. In some cases the thermostat will start the heat the home before someone gets home so it'll warm and comfortable bef

Relief Effort in Florida and Texas

During the latter part of the Summer Florida and Texas were hit hard by hurricane Irma and Harvey. These hurricanes left massive amounts of destruction in their wake, leaving these area in need of help. In response the Santoro Family of Companies donated $10,000 to the relief effort in Texas. They have also sent several oil trucks to the relief effort in Florida to help bring fuel back into the area. We will update this post with photos of the relief effort in Florida.

Heading into the Heating Season

Summer is Coming to a Quick End No matter what year after year, season after season, summer always goes by faster than any other season. Each season of course has there own strong points; fall has the leaves and cool nights, spring everything is coming back to life, winter has snow (if you like that stuff), and summer has the beach, pool parties, perfect outdoor weather. The Summer however is quickly coming to an end that means that soon you'll be heating your home again. We've touched on this subject before but there are plenty of factors to consider when picking an oil company if your new to oil. It's good to take a look at your oil company too, some of the things you should look at is price, service provided, services you'll need, and efficiency.  Many oil companies out there will try to rope people in with a low first delivery price and they jack the price up considerably. It is common for a company to offer a first delivery price, the key is to find out what