In nearly a dozen years delivering home heating oil, Roger Rose Jr. has never seen a winter like this: the cold, climbing over snow piled high and dragging a hose laden with oil over terrain where a path may — or may not — be cleared by the homeowner.
Or in one word: brutal.
“If it’s six inches, it’s no problem,” Rose, the lead driver at Spring Brook Ice & Fuel in New Britain founded in 1918, said. “But when it’s high snowbanks and you’re pulling the hose 150 feet, it’s challenging going around corners, going through fences, pulling to the middle of the house, it’s tough.”
Spring Brook and other independent heating oil suppliers in greater Hartford all say they’ve had instances where they’ve been unable to make a delivery. Then, a scramble ensues to figure out a fallback plan with the homeowner — perhaps shoveling a path — so a return visit can be made before the oil tank runs dry.
One delivery attempt by Glastonbury Oil Co. was so stymied that the delivery hose had to be snaked through the front door of a breezeway and out a back door to reach the oil fill pipe.
A snowstorm in late January dumped more than 20 inches of snow in some parts of Connecticut, ushering in a prolonged blast of frigid, arctic air. The snowfall was the most in nearly a decade but what made it particularly notable is the bitter, cold prevented any significant melting for two straight weeks.
So not only is it tough to make some deliveries, but some consumers had the potential need for more oil than usual.
Traffic moves past snow piles along Main Street in Middletown on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, a day after the state was hit by heavy snow. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
“It was kind of the perfect storm,” Greg Stafstrom, Spring Brook’s president, said. “There’s persistent, cold weather so that the snow really hasn’t gone away. It’s right up to my house, your house or the driveway, whatever the case may be.
“Demand has certainly been much higher. During some of these cold spells, we see some homes that need a delivery more than once in a month,” he said.
Experts say a spike in demand also is pushing up home heating oil prices in Connecticut.
According to the federal government’s Energy Information Administration, the average price per gallon for heating oil in Connecticut was $4.083 as of Feb. 9, up 59 cents a gallon, or 15.5%, compared with $3.496 at the end of December.
The EIA doesn’t forecast by state but for the Northeast region, the agency expects households that heat with oil will now pay 9% more for heating this winter than in 2025, higher than previously expected. The higher heating oil prices come on top of consumers in Connecticut already paying among the highest costs for electricity in the nation.
A survey of three state agencies — the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Attorney General and the Department of Consumer Protection — found less than a dozen complaints related to the surge in prices.
The consumer protection department said it has received five of those complaints, and it will attempt to mediate between those consumers and their oil suppliers.
Municipal workers from the Meriden Parks Division clear snow off the steps of the Meriden Green Bridge on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, a day after the state was hit by snow. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
“That said, there has not been a declared state of emergency,” DCP spokeswoman Kaitlyn Krasselt said, in an email. “Price fluctuations that occur during the normal course of business do not constitute price gouging.”
For anti-price gouging statutes to kick-in, the governor would have to declare a state of emergency — and, so far, that has not happened, officials said.
Daytime temperatures have moderated a bit this week, rising into the 30s. But Gov. Ned Lamont extended the state’s severe weather protocol through Sunday.
‘Simple high school economics’
At a time when the price for a gallon of regular gasoline averaged $2.90 in Connecticut last week, compared with $3.08 a year ago. according to AAA, the rise in home heating oil prices is eye-catching.
“Cold weather doesn’t increase the demand for gasoline,” Chris Herb, president of the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association, a trade group based in Cromwell, said. “Cold weather has increased the demand for home heating oil.”
Herb, whose association represents 600 independent suppliers of heating oil, propane, gasoline and other products in Connecticut, said the demand for gasoline is fairly consistent on an annual basis in Connecticut.
“Outside of Covid, we sell 1.6 billion gallons of gasoline regardless if the price is $2 a gallon or $5 a gallon,” Herb said. “People drive to work, they drive to school, they drive to the hospital and that is very consistent. Heating fuel is entirely dependent upon the weather.
Roger Rose Jr., an oil delivery driver with Spring Brook Ice & Fuel Services, fills his truck with heating oil at the company’s office in New Britain last week. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
“So, if it’s a mild winter, we might consume 375 million gallons. If its a cold winter, we might consume 550-600 million gallons. This is going to be one of those years.”
Herb said the industry plans for an average winter, not a mild or a severely cold one.
“When demand increases, supplies are drawn down and it’s simple high school economics, the price rises,” Herb said.
The price rise, however, comes as the price per barrel of crude oil — from which home heating oil is refined — is down more than 40% from its most recent peak in June, 2022, according to Yahoo! Finance.
The price per barrel for the benchmark Brent crude was $67.59 on Friday, compared with the peak of $116.23 in 2022, Yahoo! Finance reported.
Experts like veteran oil industry analyst Tom Kloza, based in New Jersey, said he would have expected crude oil prices to be even lower — say, between $50 and $60 a barrel — if were not for escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, stoking worries about supply disruptions.
President Donald Trump has threatened military strikes if Iran does not agree to a nuclear deal.
In Connecticut, Herb said he often gets asked about the falling crude prices in relation to rising home heating oil prices.
Home heating oil “is responding to a localized situation where demand is spiking,” Herb said.
Roger Rose Jr., an oil delivery driver with Spring Brook Ice & Fuel Services, delivers heating oil to a home last week in New Britain. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
Since late January, the harsh cold has has not only intensified demand for home heating oil but also natural gas and electricity. Power plants running on natural gas have been forced to switch to oil with tightening natural gas supplies, further fueling the growing demand for heating oil, Herb said.
‘Like a fire drill’
In Cheshire, F.F. Hitchcock Co., a heating oil supplier with roots in Connecticut dating back to 1878, said the cold weather is catching some customers off-guard, especially those who call in for tank refills, rather than those signed up for automatic delivery.
“They all know it’s cold,” John Bowman, Hitchcock vice-president overseeing heating oil and propane sales, said. “We all know its cold, right? Windy and everything else. People are not expecting to go through as much oil or propane as they are. They are running their tanks to a point where now its becoming like where it was a routine delivery, now it’s an emergency because they are almost out.”
“That’s sort of the challenge,” Bowman said. “Every day is like a fire drill. We’re just running around trying to get to as many customer tanks as possible. We’re definitely losing some efficiency that way because we are not sticking to our routes.”
Bowman said it is essential for customers who monitor their own oil levels to put in their orders well in advance of when they expect to run out.
U.S. inventories of “distillate” fuels produced from petroleum, which includes home heating oil, fell by the most since 2021 when measured by barrels, the EIA reported earlier this month.
Transporting that heating oil also has been disrupted along the Connecticut shoreline because harbors have temporarily frozen, forcing some home heating oil supplies to seek alternatives out of state, Herb said.
Both New Britain’s Spring Brook and Cheshire’s Hitchcock said they have been largely insulated from those worries because they store large quantities of home heating oil at their depots.
At Spring Brook, Jack Stafstrom, dispatcher and son of the owner, said there has been a surge of people in the last couple of weeks, calling about possible oil deliveries, even if they are typically customers of another oil supplier.
Roger Rose Jr., an oil delivery driver with Spring Brook Ice & Fuel Services, speaks with dispatch manager Jack Stafstron while delivering heating oil to a home in New Britain. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
“Two weekends ago, we turned away 50 new customers,” Stafstrom said last week. “So, we simply had to serve our own customers first before we could take on any new business.”
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.
