What's the price of residential heating oil doing? Any idea?

[LastNCof2022]

We recently moved and are now on heating oil rather than gas. We have only been buying oil for a year or so, so are not quite knowledgeable about its prices over the years and how they behave.

We are now at the point where we could place a 500 litre order (the minimum with our supplier) at just under 86p per litre. But should we wait? Is it likely to go down as the temperatures start getting warmer? And, even if it did, would the drop be worth the wait? Or should we bite the bullet now to avoid the risk of prices going up as other energy prices are?

Any input would be great. Thank you.

How close to running out are you? If you do run out, you'll need an engineer to restart your system, and that will add about £100 to your bill.

We have half a tank still (it's a 1K tank).

We have heating oil, usually prices go down in the summer, however at the moment who knows. The summer before last I think I got it around 54p a litre.

Also worth buying in bulk I tend to buy 2000 litres at a time as it works out cheaper but we have a 2400 litre tank, most of my neighbours have a smaller one so I realise that might not be possible.

Last summer around the heatwave I think there was a drop in price, however with prices rises for gas and electric due again in April I wouldn't like to say for sure it's all abit of a toss up at the moment.

We have a 2000l tank and tend to fill in spring and top up late summer.

It’s easy to bleed your own system if you do run dry.

Don’t touch boilerjuice, we have always been able to get cheaper going direct.

@Asdf12345 Oh no - Boilerjuice is who we've been buying from! Who would you recommend? I was told that aggregators are always cheaper than going direct...

Get the price from boiler juice and then ring up whichever company actually fulfilled your order last time and see if they'll match or beat it if you but from them direct.

*buy from them direct

I bought 500l on 19/12 at 73.95pl. I last bought some in Spring just after Putin declared war on Ukraine and I think I paid around 78p p/l although that was for 1000 litres (you get a better rate for 1000l usually).

I know when I ordered this time, 10 days before they could deliver, they wouldn't quote me a price as they said the price was still fluctuating a lot.

I will add that my supplier does seem to be generally cheap compared to others. They also run a petrol station where prices have been consistently lower than elsewhere and was one of the few places to have petrol during the fuel shortage as they own their own tankers and collect their own fuel from the terminal.

If you’re in a heating oil area, ask on your neighbourhood Facebook/next door group if there’s a local buyers club. Effectively you end up getting bulk discounts, though it might be a couple of weeks before there’s enough interest for a delivery, so it’s often not an option if you ever run low and need a emergency top up.

At the height of the pandemic, I think we paid 17 pence per litre!

@DomesticShortHair 17p per litre? Really? We had our oil central heating installed 18 years ago and our first oil delivery was charged at 19p per litre. I can assure you the price has been nowhere near that since! I know the price dropped during covid due to lack of demand but I don't recall it getting that low.

I’ve just had a look through my heating oil diary because it even sounded unbelievable to me, and yep, it was 17 pence. It was when all the oil storage was full and were pretty much giving it away because they had nowhere to put it.

I paid 24p in July 2020. It is always cheapest in July but this year has stayed relatively high. I would say a 'normal' amount would be 45p ish, but of course there's no such thing at the moment.
I use Boilerjuice, can't be arsed phoning round and I do the weekend group order thing.
Last time I ordered in November it was 80p but was delivered within three days!

Our local village (Devon) has an oil syndicate, where we aggregate everyone's orders and then shop around for the best deal. The bulk nature of the order makes it significantly cheaper. I mention it just in case it's worth you asking around to see if there's anything similar near to you.

One thing boilerjuice is good for is they host graphs on their website of oil prices over time (going back as far as 4 years) so take a look at them to see the seasonal fluctuations...

To add to the advice about shopping around, our supplier always price-matches the village oil club price (and we don't have to wait for delivery!).

@Edwardandtubbs what is a 'weekend group order thing' please?

@LastNCof2022 if you order between Friday night and Sunday night on certain weekends then they'll charge you the lowest price over the whole weekend - last time I did it we got 0.5p off the price I was first quoted.

It's around 85p a litre here atm.

I also had a just under 20p a litre order at the beginning of covid, it was when oil prices/futures were so low as no one could take the deliveries.

My usual (because I shop around and they are usually the cheapest) supplier.

Boilerjuice (not normally cheaper for me).

That's based on a week or so ago, I don't need it yet but am keeping an eye.
It's dropped since a week ago.

Mines 77.4p on boilerjuice atm. That's slightly lower than it has been

Not to hijack your thread, but aren't we supposed to be getting some kind of payment support from the government to help with paying for oil?

I'm not sure thats ever going to materialise since they cant work out how to pay it. They don't know who is on oil.

It's supposed to be £200 paid in February by your electricity supplier. Quite how they're going to know who is eligible is a mystery to me. I live in a village with no mains gas but people heat their homes using a whole host of different methods.