Refinery work could stoke heating oil bills

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Consumers may face high heating bills this winter if refinery outages prevent companies from rebuilding inventories before the cold sets in.

A large number of problems with the nation’s aging refining system this summer has drawn down fuel inventories and kept plants struggling to keep up with seasonal gasoline demand.


In addition, new greener distillate fuel requirements for non-road diesel have cut the available pool of cheap fuels used to replace heating oil when supplies wane.

“We have 46.9 (days of forward demand cover), which is very interesting because that’s the lowest in the last five years in the month of August,” said Mark Routt, analyst for Energy Security Analysis Inc (ESAI).

Reuters