Search for heating oil price per gallon and you will be shown at least three different numbers without being told they measure different things. Here they are side by side, on the same page, with what separates them.
The three prices
| Price | Latest | As of | What it includes | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale, NY Harbor ULSD spot | $5.21 | 15 September 2026 | Product at the harbor terminal. Nothing else. | B |
| Residential survey average | $5.54 | 30 March 2026 | Product, rack, trucking, dealer margin, applicable tax | A |
| Your delivered price | Your invoice | Order date | All of the above plus your volume, plan, credit terms and distance | Not published anywhere |
EIA NY Harbor ULSD spot price / EER_EPD2DXL0_PF4_RGC_DPG / published 15 September 2026 / checked 23 September 2026 / lag 8 daysone to four weeks oldtier B
Wholesale barge price at New York Harbour. Not a delivered retail price. Published here only as a labelled proxy.
EIA State Heating Oil and Propane Program / W_EPD2F_PRS_NUS_DPG / published 30 March 2026 / checked 23 September 2026 / lag 177 daysthree to six months oldtier A
Last in-season print. The survey pauses after March and resumes in October, so this figure ages all summer.
The gap, decomposed
The arithmetic gap is $0.33 a gallon, or 5.9% of the retail figure. On a 261 gallon fill that is $85.87 of everything that is not the product itself.
- Rack margin. The terminal charges more than the barge price to load a truck, and that step is where a regional supply squeeze first shows up.
- Trucking. A dealer twenty miles from a terminal and a dealer a hundred and twenty miles from one have different cost structures, and this is the largest single reason inland states can price above coastal ones despite being further from demand.
- Dealer operating cost and margin. Trucks, drivers, service technicians on call, and the working capital to carry customer accounts through a winter.
- Taxes and fees. These vary by state and are not uniform. The survey price includes them where they apply.
Two caveats on this comparison, stated because they matter. The wholesale print is 8 days old and the retail print is 177 days old, so they are not contemporaneous. The gap between two figures dated five months apart is not a live spread, it is an arithmetic difference between the last two things published. Anyone presenting it as a live margin, including us, would be overstating what the data supports.
When the gap widens
| Condition | Effect on the gap |
|---|---|
| Cold snap with high demand | Widens. Rack and trucking both tighten before retail catches up. |
| Sharp wholesale fall | Widens temporarily. Dealers are selling inventory bought at the old price. |
| Sharp wholesale rise | Narrows temporarily, then retail follows. |
| Off season | Unmeasurable. There is no new retail print to compare against. |
| Regional refinery or logistics outage | Widens in the affected region only, which the national figure hides. |
What to do with this
Watch the wholesale series if you want an early signal on direction, and take the retail survey as the benchmark for what a household should be paying. Do not use the wholesale number to argue with a dealer. It is not the price of anything they can buy.
Primary sources for this page
- CME Group NY Harbor ULSD futuresThe contract that most people still call NYMEX heating oil. Renamed NY Harbor ULSD in 2013.
- EIA New York Harbor ULSD spot priceDaily wholesale barge price. Published on this site only as a labelled wholesale proxy and never as a retail price.
- EIA State Heating Oil and Propane ProgramWeekly residential delivered price of No. 2 heating oil, national and by state. Collected October to March. The survey pauses after the last March print and resumes in October, which is why every federal page shows March data all summer.
- EIA Winter Fuels OutlookPublished each October alongside the Short-Term Energy Outlook. Forecast household heating expenditure by fuel and region.