National average heating oil price per gallon

The EIA State Heating Oil and Propane Program (SHOPP) is the primary source. The weekly survey runs October through March, draws on a stratified sample of about 1,000 retail heating oil outlets across 21 states and the District of Columbia, and publishes national and state averages about 1:00 p.m. ET each Wednesday. The last published national average is $6.14/gal for the week of 2026-11-02 EIA.

How SHOPP is collected

During the heating season, state energy offices and EIA collect the data jointly across the 21 covered states and DC (NY, MA, CT, ME, NH, VT, PA, RI, plus DE, MD, NJ and others). Dealers are contacted by telephone or email on Monday and report the price offered to residential consumers, taken as of 7:00 a.m. local time that Monday. Two things catch people out. The reported price excludes taxes, and it excludes discounts such as those given to cash or high-volume buyers, so a delivered invoice is normally higher than the survey number. Outlets that cannot be reached are imputed. The national figure is volume-weighted using each outlet's annual sales volume, and an average is withheld entirely if responding outlets cover less than half the sampled volume. The sample is drawn from a frame of roughly 5,000 retail heating oil outlets.EIA

Release schedule

• October through March: collected Mondays, published about 1:00 p.m. ET the following Wednesday. A government holiday on or before that Wednesday pushes the release to Thursday or Friday.
• April through September: the weekly survey stops and collection drops to the second Monday of each month. No off-season residential heating oil reading was published for 2026.
• Next release: 2026-11-12.

The pause is the structural reason summer headlines on big news sites quote 6-month-old data. This site shows the EIA NY Harbor ULSD spot daily wholesale alongside the EIA retail so off-season visitors still see a moving number.

National average vs Northeast 8

Why the national figure understates the Northeast

EIA's Winter Fuels Outlook puts it plainly: heating oil is the main space heating fuel for just 3% of US households, and more than 80% of the homes that use it are in the Northeast. Note what that figure is and is not. It is a share of oil-heated homes, not of gallons burned, and the region is the Northeast rather than PADD1A, which is New England only: New York and Pennsylvania sit in PADD1B. The remaining oil-heated homes are spread thin across the other reporting states with smaller dealer panels and milder weather, which drags the national average down. If you live in the eight states above, the state number on New York or Maine is the one to watch.

Internal cross-references

• Weekly EIA release calendar
• Wholesale vs retail spread
• 25-year price history
• Seasonal price pattern
• Sources manifest