High oil and gas prices are hitting some New England families hard. The cold winter, followed by the rising cost of home heating oil due to the war in the Middle East, makes it hard to pay the bills.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The war in Iran has caused more than just gasoline prices to rise. The cost of heating oil has spiked, too. More than 30% of homes in New England use that. From member station WBUR in Boston, here’s Miriam Wasser.
MIRIAM WASSER, BYLINE: To fill or not to fill the oil tank? That was the question plaguing James Mercier earlier this week. He’s a social worker who lives with his wife and their young son in a two-bedroom apartment in Gloucester, an oceanside city about 45 minutes north of Boston. Mercier says the last few months have been tough on the family budget.
JAMES MERCIER: We use heating oil, so it’s expensive, always, but especially this winter. January and February were so cold.
WASSER: They topped off the tank in January at a cost of $680. But with all the cold weather, Mercier had a feeling they were blowing through it.
MERCIER: I went down to our basement to check. I was like, oh, we’re at three-eighths, so that means we need to fill it up.
WASSER: He wasn’t sure how the war in Iran might affect the cost of heating oil, so he did some research. What he found shocked him. While the average cost of heating oil in Massachusetts has been about $3.80 a gallon this winter, many companies were now charging $5 a gallon or more. At that rate, he and his wife weren’t sure they could afford a refill. Plus, what if the cost went down next week?
MERCIER: We were going back and forth. Should we do it now, or should we wait? Someone said this. Someone said we should wait. Well, maybe we should wait. Well, I don’t know about that. It’s just stressful to even be talking about.
WASSER: Mercier says he found himself looking at weather forecasts and trying to teach himself how oil markets fluctuate. He also learned that letting the oil level in the tank get too low can damage the system, and he certainly couldn’t afford to fix that. In the end, they decided to fill their tank one-third of the way, the minimum allowed by their oil company. The cost of that? $500. Was it the right decision? Even industry insiders aren’t sure. They say a lot depends on how long the war lasts and how it affects oil shipping routes.
Michael Ferrante is president of the Massachusetts Energy Marketers Association, an industry group for heating oil and propane suppliers.
MICHAEL FERRANTE: No one knows when the price of crude oil will start to go down. That’s the uncertainty that we live with when you’re dealing with commodities like petroleum and heating oil.
WASSER: That’s tough for families like the ones Dianne Schiavone sees every day. She oversees the fuel assistance program at the nonprofit Community Action Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. This federally funded program, often called LIHEAP, helps lower-income households cover the cost of their heating bills.
DIANNE SCHIAVONE: What is happening right now – as time goes on, more and more of our clients have exhausted their fuel benefits. So it’s putting people in a very difficult position.
WASSER: Schiavone says she’s fielding a lot of calls from people who need help. According to state officials, nearly three-quarters of households in the program have $100 or less in benefits left to get them through the heating season. Schiavone recounts a recent call from a 90-year-old woman who had nothing left in her account.
SCHIAVONE: She has no family. She has no one to assist her. She doesn’t have the ability to go out and work an extra shift. She has her Social Security, and that’s all she has. And we have to say no? It just breaks your heart.
WASSER: On Tuesday, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced her administration is releasing $15 million to help people in the heating assistance program. With this money, many households will get a few hundred extra dollars to help pay for heat.
For NPR News, I’m Miriam Wasser in Boston.
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