1. What the Winter Fuels Outlook actually is
The Winter Fuels Outlook is the EIA's annual estimate of what US households will spend heating their homes over the coming winter, broken out by main heating fuel, published once a year in October as a special section of the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). It is not a forecast of the price of a single gallon or therm on a single day. It combines an expected fuel price with an expected amount of fuel used, based on a weather assumption, to produce a total dollar figure for the season per household.
Because the number depends on both price and weather, the EIA updates it during the winter when either changes. The most recent example is the 2025-26 edition: the first release on 15 October 2025 assumed a roughly normal winter, and a follow-up on 15 December 2025 revised the numbers upward after December turned out colder than expected. Readers who only see the October headline figure and not the December revision are working from an outdated number for roughly half the heating season.
2. What the Outlook contains
The Winter Fuels Outlook covers the four main heating fuels used by US households: heating oil, natural gas, electricity and propane. For each fuel it gives a projected average household expenditure for the winter (typically defined as October through March), compared with the previous winter, plus the assumptions behind the number: a wholesale or retail price path and a temperature assumption. Heating oil and propane households, who are more exposed to a single delivery price than gas or electricity customers on a metered tariff, tend to see the largest percentage swings between editions.
The temperature assumption is the part most readers skip and the part that moves the number most. When the EIA models a winter as colder than the recent average, projected fuel use rises even if the underlying commodity price is unchanged, which is exactly what happened between the October and December 2025 editions of the outlook described below.
3. How to read it without over-interpreting it
Treat the headline percentage change and dollar figure as a national or regional average built on an assumed winter, not a promise about your own bill. Three things to check before using a Winter Fuels Outlook number: the publication date (October editions assume a winter that has not started yet), whether a later revision exists (the EIA typically issues at least one mid-winter update once real temperature data arrives), and whether the figure is a national average or broken out by region, since heating oil expenditure is concentrated in the Northeast.
For a state-level or regional read specific to heating oil, the outlook's national dollar figure is less useful than the EIA's separate weekly residential heating oil price series, which our Northeast heating oil forecast and New England, state by state pages track through the season.
4. Last year's edition: 15 October 2025 and the 15 December 2025 update
The most recent full-year cycle is the best illustration of how much a Winter Fuels Outlook can move between its first release and its winter update. The edition published on 15 October 2025 projected that households heating primarily with oil would spend about 8% less than the previous winter, averaging around $1,390 for the season, on an assumption of roughly normal weather.
That assumption did not hold. In an update published on 15 December 2025, the EIA reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was then expecting December 2025 to run about 8% colder than the average of the previous ten Decembers. At the same time, wholesale natural gas had moved well beyond the October forecast: Henry Hub spot gas was near $3.00 per MMBtu when the October STEO was built, and had risen to more than $4.00 per MMBtu by late November 2025. The EIA said both developments pushed its residential energy expenditure forecasts for the November 2025 through March 2026 season higher than the October figures. The December update did not publish a revised heating-oil-specific dollar figure in the passage the EIA released; the direction, upward, applied across the fuels it covers.
5. What is already known ahead of the 2026-27 edition
The Winter Fuels Outlook for the 2026-27 season has not been published yet, but several of the inputs it will use are already on the record from the EIA's regular September 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook and from commodity markets. The STEO published on 9 September 2026 projects Brent crude averaging $91 a barrel in 2026 and $74 in 2027, and expects US distillate inventories, the category that includes heating oil, to fall below 100 million barrels in September 2026 and to stay under the five-year low (2021 to 2025) well into 2027.
On the demand side, NY Harbor heating oil futures, the wholesale benchmark US dealers price against, traded at $5.10 a gallon on 11 September 2026. The EIA's own weekly residential heating oil price survey, which the Winter Fuels Outlook draws on for its in-season updates, has been paused since the week ending 30 March 2026 and is scheduled to resume on 7 October 2026, shortly before the new outlook itself is expected. None of these figures is a household expenditure forecast in its own right; they are the raw material the EIA will combine with a weather assumption once it builds the 2026-27 edition. Background on the crude and distillate side of this picture is on our US diesel and heating oil prices page.
6. When the new Outlook is expected
Based on the publication pattern of the last several years, including the 15 October 2025 release described above, the next Winter Fuels Outlook is expected in October 2026. We are not naming an exact date here because the EIA has not yet published one; prior editions fell within the first half of October. This page will be updated with the confirmed date and figures once the EIA releases the 2026-27 edition.
7. How to use it for your own buying decision
Use the Winter Fuels Outlook as a weather-adjusted sanity check on the direction of your bill, not as a per-gallon price to plan a purchase around. If the October 2026 edition shows heating oil expenditure rising by a double-digit percentage against a backdrop of the distillate stock shortfall the EIA is already projecting for September 2026, that is a signal to firm up a delivery plan rather than wait. If it shows a decline, check whether that is built on a warmer-than-recent-years weather assumption before treating it as a reason to delay, since, as the December 2025 update showed, that assumption can change within two months.
For the delivery decision itself, tank level matters more than any single forecast: our Northeast heating oil forecast and New England winter 2026-27 page set out a tank-based rule for when to lock in a price rather than float.
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