Rachel Reeves<\/a>, told parliament she recognised households that used heating oil faced \u201cunique challenges\u201d. She said officials would meet rural and Northern Ireland\u2019s MPs on Wednesday to explore \u201cfurther action\u201d.<\/p>\nAcross the UK, an estimated 1.7m households rely on heating oil, and in Northern Ireland it is the primary heating source for two-thirds of households. It is typically a form of kerosene so prices are linked to the cost of jet fuel.<\/p>\n
As wholesale prices have risen, some customers have had orders cancelled, leaving them to try to rebuy at a higher price. Others have struggled to find suppliers willing to deliver to them.<\/p>\n
Emma Simpson, the chief executive of Rural Action Derbyshire, a charity that runs an oil-buying scheme, said its supplier was limiting orders to 500 litres a household because of the volatility. Usually that is the minimum order people can place.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cPeople who rely on heating oil are facing a sudden and frightening surge in cost. We may be heading into spring, but anyone running low on oil right now doesn\u2019t have the luxury of waiting for prices to fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some, the decision to order or not will come down to whether they can realistically afford it, and that is a really hard position to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simpson said panic buying was adding to the pressure on prices, which would usually be starting to drop as the warmer months approached.<\/p>\n
One woman in Hampshire said she had attempted to get a quote for 1,000 litres of oil via the online broker BoilerJuice, but had been told that because of high demand it could not give her a quote.<\/p>\n
She used to fill up the tank every summer but had moved to be part of a syndicate and was due to place an order soon. The syndicate wrote this week to members saying its supplier was not taking bulk orders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m watching the level very carefully,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to run out \u2013 I\u2019m not sure that we\u2019d be able to get someone to come in the next 24 hours if we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another heating oil user, Jo Teather, said the cost of buying 500 litres to be delivered to her home in Cornwall had gone up from about \u00a3340 at the start of last week to \u00a3858.<\/p>\n
Since a similar hike four years ago after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, Teather has kept watch on prices and a fund so she could move quickly if they started to rise again. She placed an order the day after the US and Israel began airstrikes on Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt went up to over \u00a31,000 for 500 litres after Ukraine,\u201d Teather said. \u201cLast Sunday I thought: \u2018I\u2019m just going to buy it now\u2019\u2026 I\u2019m so glad we bought when we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some BoilerJuice customers have posted on the Trustpilot website saying their orders have been cancelled.<\/p>\n
Under their comments, the company has apologised, saying: \u201cWe\u2019re currently seeing a higher-than-usual number of cancellations from our suppliers, and we\u2019re truly sorry your order was one of them. We\u2019re working closely with all our delivery partners to improve communication and ensure that any cancellations or changes are communicated to customers as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
UKIFDA, a trade body for distributors, said prices were being driven up by the high price of jet fuel in Europe. It said suppliers bought fuel \u201calmost daily\u201d so rises were quickly being reflected in what customers were paying.<\/p>\n
The Competition and Markets Authority has told suppliers they must treat customers fairly. Emma Cochrane, the acting executive director for consumer protection at the regulator, said: \u201cGenerally, we would expect that customers who have placed orders for heating oil should receive it at the agreed price. Suppliers should be clear what they are charging and terms must be fair.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won\u2019t hesitate to take action if we suspect that consumer or competition law is being broken.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rural households that rely on heating oil to warm their homes and provide hot water are facing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-467353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}