To fill or not to fill the oil tank. That was the question plaguing James Mercier earlier this week.
Mercier, a 31-year-old social worker, lives with his wife and their young son in a two-bedroom apartment in Gloucester. They get by on his $85,000 salary, an income that lands them a few thousand dollars above the limit for federal heating assistance.
In a good year, the family budget doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room, Mercier said. But the last few months have been particularly tough.
“We use heating oil, so it’s expensive always,” he said. “But especially this winter — January and February were so cold.”
Even though they filled their tank in January, Mercier said he had a nagging feeling last week they were blowing through their oil. So over the weekend, he went down to the basement to check.
The tank was 3/8ths full. Time for a refill — or maybe not?
As the war in Iran sends global oil prices into turmoil, many Massachusetts residents are feeling the financial reverberations. The price of gasoline is up, as is the cost of heating oil — a delivered fossil fuel that’s used by about 20% of homes in state.
The average price of retail heating oil this winter has been $3.83 per gallon, according to state data. Prices tend to tick up during peak winter months, and in the weeks before the war, the average price was $4.18.
By the time Mercier went into his basement to check the oil tank last weekend, many oil companies were charging $5, or more.
Mercier and his wife weren’t sure they could afford a refill. Plus, he said, what if the cost went down in a week or two? Fossil fuel prices are notoriously volatile, after all.
“We were going back and forth. Should we do it now? Should we wait? Someone said this, someone said we should wait,” he said. “It’s just stressful to even be talking about.”
Mercier said 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, which he certainly couldn’t afford to fix.
And of course, he was kicking himself for not checking the oil tank earlier.
“If I did that a couple weeks ago, before we started a war, it would have been fine,” he said. “I could have filled it up and been good through the summer and into the fall.”
In the end, he and his wife decided to get a 100-gallon fill, the minimum allowed by their oil company. The cost of that? $500.
Was it the right decision? Even industry insiders aren’t sure.
“No one knows when the price of the 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,” said Michael Ferrante, president of the Massachusetts Energy Marketers Association, an industry group for heating oil and propane suppliers.
The combination of volatile prices and uncertainty is tough for people like Mercier and the families Dianne Schiavone works with every day at the Worcester Community Action Center. Schiavone oversees the Home Energy Assistance Program, the federally funded program — formerly known as LIHEAP — that helps lower-income households cover the cost of their heating bills.
“What is happening right now is that as time goes on, more and more of our clients have exhausted their fuel benefits,” she said. “So it’s putting people in a very difficult position, especially if they can’t afford to purchase the oil for themselves.”
According to state officials, 72% of households in the program have $100 or less in benefits left.
Schiavone said she’s received hundreds of phone calls from people who need help — some who are disabled and can’t work, others are single moms trying to make ends meet. One caller was a 90-year-old woman who had used up all of her benefits.
“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,” Schiavone said. “She has her social security and that’s all she has. And we have to say ‘no.’ It just breaks your heart.”
Earlier this week, a coalition of 23 community action agencies across Massachusetts warned state leaders that tens of thousands of households in the state of are at risk of not being able to heat their homes for the remainder of the winter heating season. They also called on officials to kick in $35 million of state money to supplement the federal funds.
“Our clients are desperate,” said Pam Kuechler, President of the Massachusetts Association of Community Action in a letter to state officials. “Close to 80 percent of our households that heat with oil are out of their oil or will be within a few days. Right now, we do not have the resources to help many of them. This is an unprecedented situation.”
In December, Massachusetts received $146 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the Home Energy Assistance Program. On the one hand, it was a relief because President Trump had threatened to eliminate the program over the summer, and then the government shutdown delayed the money from going out to states. But on the other, it was far less than advocates had hoped for.
Thanks to a particularly cold winter and increased efforts to get lower income residents to apply, Schiavone said community action agencies used up the money they were allotted early.
On Tuesday, Gov. Maura Healey announced she was releasing $15 million in order to increase benefits for those in the program. The governor’s office estimated the additional money will increase the maximum benefit for oil customers from $1,000 to $1,400. For people who heat with natural gas or electricity, the maximum benefit they can receive will increase from $850 to $925.
As for what happens next, many energy analysts say it’s impossible to predict. A lot depends on how long the war lasts and how it affects oil shipping routes. They’re also watching natural gas markets, since the price of gas has soared in Europe and Asia.
That hasn’t happened in the U.S., so far. But if it does, everyone who uses natural gas and electricity in Massachusetts will feel the pinch.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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