BRUNSWICK, Maine — High prices are hitting home.
Paul, the driver of an oil truck, said he made a delivery to a home on Wednesday and left a bill in the door for $1,000. For one tank fill-up.
With heating oil prices well above $5 per gallon in some parts of Maine, bills of that size are becoming more common.
Oil prices in Maine have spiked to record highs, pushing diesel fuel over $6 per gallon in places, while gasoline prices are often above $5 per gallon.
While summer is normally a time for Mainers to set aside concerns about heating their homes, the soaring prices have a number of people already worried about paying their heating bills next winter.
“It was like this in 2008, but never this high," Charlie Summers, president and CEO of the Maine Energy Marketers Association, said.
Summers said the price spikes, especially for heating oil, are delaying the normal rollout of pre-buy contract offers for customers. Those contracts allow customers to pay their season’s fuel bills in advance with one up-front payment and not worry about price increases for the rest of the heating season. The fuel companies use those contracts to make their own large, bulk purchases of heating oil and propane for the season, guaranteeing a fixed price for those customers.
But Summers said several companies haven’t been able to set prices yet because no one in the business knows where prices are going.
“That’s one of the difficulties on a company offering these contracts because there’s so much fluctuation right now," Summers said.
“It used to be the price of heating fuel was fairly stable,” Summers added, “But now, with the spikes going on, a lot of companies may not be offering the contracts they did in the past."
The vice president of M.W. Sewall in Bath told NEWS CENTER Maine her company has not yet been able to determine a pre-buy offer price because the fuel wholesalers they buy from haven’t been able to set their own prices due to the uncertainty of the market.
Another dealer said heating oil is the real question mark because propane prices appear more stable, although they, too, have increased. At that dealer, the price on Tuesday for propane was $3.29/gallon, while heating oil cost $5.69 per gallon.
Aside from pre-buy contracts, Summers said there is another option: budget plans.
For customers who don’t want to do the pre-buy contract or who can’t afford to write the large check for an up-front payment, he said budget plans let customers spread out their payments over a year, making each of those payments smaller than bills for a fill-up.
“Talk to your fuel dealer, tell them the situation you’re in, and they will work with you to put a budget plan together so you can get through this heating season," Summers said.
He advised people to contact their dealers early to allow time to review the options and get payments started before tank fill-ups begin.