Tempers rise over oil-heat lock-ins

Consumers and local governments that locked into long-term contracts for heating fuel and diesel this year to save money as prices soared are feeling buyer’s remorse as they watch prices plummet.

“We’ve never gone through anything like this where prices rise so quickly and fall so quickly,” says Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America.


In Connecticut, more than 500 people have called the attorney general’s office in the past two months, trying to get out of the fuel contracts. The national average for home heating oil is $2.41 a gallon. Some paid more than $4 this year.

“It’s a universal plea: they want us to extricate them from these contracts,” says Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

USA Today