Maine Heating Oil Hits $5.97 a Gallon, Up 79% in a Year, as Winter Nears
Families in the Northeast, where most oil-heated homes sit, are turning to food-pantry-style firewood banks after fuel prices rose with the Iran war.
FREEPORT, Maine — The price of heating oil in Maine has climbed from $3.34 a gallon a year ago to $5.97 today, a jump of roughly 79%, and families are making hard choices ahead of winter, CBS News reported.
Chris and Cheryl Oliver of Freeport live on roughly $60,000 a year. "Am I going to get food this week, or am I going to get gas this week?" Cheryl Oliver told CBS News. Diesel and gasoline prices have risen considerably since the start of the Iran war, and heating oil has followed. The Olivers qualified for 100 gallons of free heating oil through a local community center, help worth about $700. It still will not get them through the winter. "I was panicking, like, how are we going to fill our tank and how are we going to stay warm?" she said.
The problem reaches well beyond one town. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, more than 4 million U.S. households use heating oil as their primary fuel, and 82% of them are concentrated in the Northeast. That makes the region far more exposed than the rest of the country to swings in the price of the fuel.
Tony DiMarco, co-founder of the Freeport Wood Bank, a food pantry of sorts for firewood, said demand is "extremely high." The bank depends on donations. "I don't think people fully recognize how big of an impact it's going to have when heating oil costs twice as much as it did last year, and people are already spending as much as they did last year," DiMarco said. "I just don't think people fully grasp the severity of the problem."
The Freeport Wood Bank is one of about 17 similar wood banks across Maine. It can supply about 50 families with firewood, but DiMarco says it will run out by the middle of winter. This week he delivered two free cords of firewood to the Olivers to help them stretch their heating oil.
For the Olivers, the help is a lifeline. Chris Oliver lost a leg to diabetes and later suffered a heart attack. "Tony and that place, they're unbelievable," he said, emotional. "I don't know without them if we'd have heat."
The Olivers' situation shows how a global price shock reaches household budgets. A conflict overseas has pushed up what Americans pay at the pump and now threatens what they pay to stay warm, at a time when many families say their incomes have not kept up. With cold weather arriving, charities and local donors are being asked to cover a gap that could grow as temperatures fall and tanks run low.
