Paid 2.41 (got 15 bucks off first time delivery ) last Friday. I think it is going to be a bad one here in the northeast. Record lows this week chills around 0. UGH
Natural gas is usually stored en masse during the Summer months to hedge Winter use supply shortages. Apparently in an attempt to drive up Nat Gas prices the amount in storage is the lowest level ever. So every little cold spell will invoke "low supplies" and drive the price up. How much crude, HHO and gasoline is sitting (and the rate of change) in tanks/storage is one of the larger driving forces for price. $2.51 for HHO today and will probably be less on Monday next week. I'm waiting ( and getting pretty low )
Today heating oil is $2.76 and last week I paid $2.62. Go figure? It never seems to go down once it’s gets cold here. Even though the price is now $53 a barrel they are very reluctant to lower the price. If they ever do it’s just a few cents. It’s like a monopoly. They tell you the refiners have already switched over to making gasoline and they only have what has already been produced before the fall. I know that has to be BS because diesel is the same stuff and they make that all year. We've got a gas line in the street and probably will convert once the furnace goes. Glad I have wood to offset the oil.
Road fuel and Home Heating Oil are NOT the same. They are similar and can be substituted in a pinch. Home heating fuel does not have taxes paid, lacks engine detergents, lubricants and additives your engine requires and has a horrible cetane rating. You really DO NOT want to be running tank after tank of HHO in a modern engine.
I understand that, but if they leave out the additives, it’s still HHO #2 diesel. So I think they are constantly producing the base product.
It is a monopoly don't let them tell you otherwise, with all the consolidating that happened in the 90's what refineries we have are owned by a few now. It wasn't like that 30 years ago. And it's BS about refiners switching to this or that, most oil refined has everything in it, diesel, heating oil, naptha, gasoline etc. Gas is lighter, diesel is heavier, depending on the oil they are refining says how much they get out of that barrel but they get everything still from that barrel. Lighter crudes have less diesel refined from it, heavier crudes yields more diesel. It's my understanding at least of the industry and I'm not expert or trying to sound like one. I also believe they get less diesel from fracking oil and the quality of gasoline isn't that great, which is why higher octane at times seems more expensive than normally. And why heating oil/diesel hasn't really dropped in price much. They just don't yield as much from the fracking oil crude. But none the less, they do refine heavy fuel oil and gasoline at the same time, all the time.
Cheapest I've seen diesel at the pump is $3.19. Hoping that will come down for my weekly fill up of 12 gallons or so. I only put 150 gallons in our oil tank. We'll need more come Feb. We really only use the oil for the hot water heater. I would love to replace the oil with propane and put in on demand hot water heaters plus a setup for our grill. Yes Propane is more expensive, but for what I use it for, it would be cheaper. At least logic and what I've read.
Interesting that gas is going down, but according to the NH govt stats for this week, HHO is going up - not by much compared to October, I'll grant. Course the weather could have something to do with that - more people needing heating fuels more often. Whereas auto gas consumption is not affected as much by the weather (that is affected more by time of year such as holidays).
