Two Winter Heating Forecasts Split on Gas. Both Say Oil Homes Get Hit Hardest.

Update, October 10, 2026: The federal forecast is out, and it splits from the one below on the fuel half the country uses. The Energy Information Administration’s Winter Fuels Outlook, released October 6, projects natural gas homes will spend an average of $640 this winter, down 8.8 percent from $702 last winter, and propane homes $1,246, down 3.2 percent. NEADA had both going up. Electricity: EIA says $1,196, up 4.0 percent, less than NEADA’s 9.0. Heating oil is where the two agree in direction: EIA has the price at $5.26 a gallon, up 33.6 percent, and spending at $2,115, up 21.2 percent, with a milder Northeast winter absorbing part of the price jump. Region matters more than ever. EIA expects a much colder West, so gas spending there rises 7.0 percent and electric heating 9.4 percent, while Northeast gas homes spend 14 percent less. Our read: if you heat with oil, plan for the worse number, because both forecasts say it hurts. If you heat with gas, don’t panic-budget off the September headline. The steps below still hold. EIA updates this forecast on November 10.

If you heat with oil, NEADA’s September report projects your bill this winter will run 31.3 percent higher than last winter. If you heat with natural gas, 5.8 percent. Same country, same weather forecast, same report.

For the next month you will read the national number everywhere: heating costs up 8.7 percent, the average household spending $1,030, an increase of $82. That comes from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which released its winter heating report on September 14. It is a real number and close to useless as a prediction of your own bill.

Here is the actual spread. Natural gas, up 5.8 percent. Propane, up 8.7 percent. Electricity, up 9.0 percent. Heating oil, up 31.3 percent.

NEADA ties the oil number to the war in Iran. Crude was trading around $72 a barrel before the conflict, then rose toward $100 as worries built about supply and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Heating oil follows crude almost directly, so that move passed straight through to the households that still burn it.

Electricity is the slower, more permanent story. NEADA names the causes plainly: higher interest rates making power plants and transmission upgrades expensive to finance, rising natural gas prices, aging grid infrastructure, regional capacity constraints, and demand growing fast, driven in part by data centers. None of those reverse in the spring.

The compounding should get your attention. Since the winter of 2021-22, heating an electrically heated home costs 35.7 percent more. Heating oil, 62.1 percent more. Natural gas, 16.9 percent. Propane actually fell 14.7 percent. That is not a spike. It is a new baseline.

And it is already breaking people. About one in six US households is behind on utility bills right now, with residential utility debt approaching $23 billion. In 2024, utilities shut off residential electric service about 13.4 million times and gas service about 1.7 million times for nonpayment.

“This is a warning that too many families are entering winter with no room left in their budgets,” said Mark Wolfe, NEADA’s executive director.

So do three things in the next two weeks, while it is still warm enough that nobody at your utility is in crisis mode.

Call your utility and ask for budget billing, sometimes called levelized billing. It spreads the year’s cost into equal monthly payments so January does not arrive as a $400 surprise. It saves you nothing on the total. It saves you the shock, which is what actually causes missed payments.

Apply to your state’s LIHEAP office now, not in January. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program runs through state offices with their own windows and rules, and the money is finite. NEADA is currently asking Congress to lift funding from $4 billion to $7 billion, which is a polite way of saying the program runs out.

If you burn oil, get quotes this week and ask specifically about a price cap versus a fixed price versus buying at market. At a projected 31.3 percent increase, the difference between those three contracts is real money, and your dealer will not volunteer the comparison.

The national average also hides your region. In the 2025-26 EIA outlook NEADA cites, Northeast electricity averaged about 24 cents per kilowatt-hour against about 16 cents in the Midwest and 15 cents in the South. And more than 275 electric and gas utilities have raised, won approval for, or proposed rate increases since 2025, which NEADA estimates could add more than $101 billion to bills through 2028.

Run your own number instead of borrowing theirs. Our budget planner will take a winter heating line and show you what it displaces. If your power bill is the one climbing, we went through why it keeps rising through 2027 separately.

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