(Getty Images)
Americans who heat their homes with oil face bills about 31% higher this winter as the Iran war keeps global crude supplies tight, a national group of energy assistance officials said this week, reports ABC News.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projected Monday that the average U.S. household will spend $1,030 on heating this winter, $82 more than last year. The 8.7% increase is more than twice the rate of inflation, the group said.
Heating oil, widely used across the Northeast, shows the steepest rise at 31.3%. Electricity costs are projected to climb 9%, propane 8.7% and natural gas 5.8%.
“This is a warning that too many families are entering winter with no room left in their budgets,” NEADA Executive Director Mark Wolfe said.
In Maine, heating oil averaged $5.77 a gallon Monday, up 74% from a year earlier, the state Department of Energy Resources reported. Filling a standard 275-gallon tank now costs nearly $675 more than it did a year ago, the agency said.
Alicia Fasulo, who runs heating assistance at The Opportunity Alliance, a nonprofit in southern Maine, told ABC News that “the cost of fuel has never been this high since I started with the heat program seven years ago.”
The federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, funded at $4 billion a year, reaches only about 20% of eligible households, David Konisky, an Indiana University political science professor who co-directs the school’s Energy Justice Lab, told ABC News.
“There is much more demand than there are resources to fill that demand,” Konisky said.
NEADA is pressing Congress to raise LIHEAP funding to $7 billion.
“Congress cannot wait for the first cold snap,” Wolfe said.
The price spike traces to late February, when U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran led Tehran to all but shut the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for about a fifth of the world’s oil. Crude, which sold for about $72 a barrel before the conflict, traded near $103 on Friday, ABC News reported.
Fuel prices at the pump have followed. AAA put the national average for regular gasoline at $4.48 on Saturday. Diesel hit $6.49, its highest average on record.
NEADA said one factor is keeping projected costs from rising further: El Niño, which is expected to bring a warmer-than-normal winter.
Konisky said households will still feel the pinch.
“Families will have to figure out how to balance the essential needs they have,” he said.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.