A delivery truck backed into a driveway in Augusta, Maine last Wednesday. The driver filled a standard 275-gallon tank. The bill came to $1,661. Last October the same fill cost $908. That's $753 more. The homeowner is 71 years old and heats with oil because there is no gas line on her street.

I can't stop thinking about this.

Last week the Social Security Administration announced the 2027 cost-of-living raise. It works out to about $75 a month for the average retiree. One tank fill just ate ten months of it.

And here is what makes it worse. The federal government has an emergency heating oil reserve for the Northeast. It is called the NEHHOR. It holds one million barrels. That sounds like a lot. It is not. The Government Accountability Office looked at it and said the whole thing covers less than two days of regional consumption. Less than two days. For 3.56 million homes.

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On Wednesday the Department of Energy announced it would release 315,000 barrels from the reserve. That is one-third of everything we have. At normal US distillate demand rates that is roughly two hours of supply. Two hours.

The reserve has only been tapped twice in its 26-year history. Once after Hurricane Sandy. And now. Energy Secretary Chris Wright called it a temporary measure to solve a temporary supply disruption. I don't think most people realize how small this cushion actually is. In 2011 Congress cut the reserve in half. It used to hold two million barrels. They sold half and never put it back.

Maine burns more heating oil per person than any state in the country. About half of all homes there heat with oil. The average price hit a record $6.03 a gallon last week. That is 86 percent higher than the same week a year ago. In Massachusetts it is $6.12. In Pennsylvania it is $6.07. The Iran war broke the diesel market and heating oil rides the same barrel.

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Here's what worries me. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association counts 1.2 million low-income households in the Northeast that heat with oil. Their combined bill this winter is projected at $3.15 billion. That is up from $2.10 billion last year. The only federal program built to help them is LIHEAP. It covers about six million homes across the country. The Trump administration has proposed eliminating it for the sixth time. Congress has saved it each time. But here is the part that fell through the cracks. In April 2025 the Department of Health and Human Services fired every single federal employee who ran the program. All fifteen of them. None have been replaced. Eighteen months later the program is running with no federal staff.

LIHEAP is funded at $4.05 billion right now. At its peak in 2021 it had $8.2 billion. That is a $4 billion drop. And the money buys far less fuel at six dollars a gallon than it did at three.

I get it. Not everyone heats with oil. But this is not just an oil story. East Coast distillate inventories sat roughly 30 percent below their five-year average last week. In New England they were 44 percent below. Distillate means diesel and heating oil. They come from the same barrel. When heating oil demand surges in January that barrel gets pulled away from the trucks that move your groceries. The EIA projects average heating oil spending this winter at $2,115 per household. Up from $1,749 last year. Across all 4.35 million homes that is $8.7 billion. Up $1.5 billion from last winter.

Nobody knows what a cold snap in January would do to a reserve with about 685,000 barrels left. That is what remains after the release. Less than a day and a half.

Massachusetts already declared a state of energy emergency on October 5. Governor Healey created a new aid program for 50,000 middle-class households that earn too much for LIHEAP but cannot afford six-dollar oil. Rhode Island directed $28 million in state reserves toward winter bills. Maine put up $40 million in electricity discounts. States are building their own safety nets because the federal one has no staff.

The number I keep coming back to is this. The entire emergency heating oil reserve for the Northeast. The whole thing. Covers less than two days. We just gave away a third of it. And winter has not started yet.

I think about the woman in Augusta with the $1,661 tank fill. She will need two more fills before March. Maybe three. That is close to $5,000 just to keep the pipes from freezing. Her COLA raise gives her $900 for the whole year. The math does not work. And the reserve that is supposed to protect her would not last through a long weekend.

More on this tomorrow.

— American Ledger