Assessing the Impact of Recent Fossil Fuel Price Increases on Vermonters

Fuel prices have jumped sharply in Vermont since war broke out in Iran at the end of February, and a new analysis puts a dollar figure on what that means for households. Gasoline rose from $3.00 a gallon in late February to $4.47 by the end of May, adding more than $75 a month to costs for the average driver, bringing typical monthly gas spending to about $240. Fuel oil, the fuel most Vermont homes use for heat, climbed from $3.98 to $5.09 a gallon over the same stretch. That pushed the cost of a typical 200-gallon delivery from around $800 before the war to over $1,000 in April and May. A colder-than-normal heating season meant many households burned through their early-season oil and had to buy more at these higher prices.

Statewide, the analysis estimates gasoline, diesel, and fuel oil price increases added $124 million in costs across Vermont from March through May, compared with what residents and businesses would have paid at pre-war prices. Of that, about $77.6 million came from gasoline, $23.6 million from diesel, and $22.8 million from fuel oil.

For homeowners, the takeaway is that heating oil remains both expensive and prone to these kinds of price swings. The analysis points to weatherization (sealing and insulating a home to cut heating needs) and switching to heat pumps or advanced wood heating as ways to reduce exposure to oil price spikes over time, and notes that electric vehicles are insulated from gasoline price swings since their fuel costs come from electricity instead.