As featured in
The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian
Fueltool doesn't sell oil and no supplier owns us. We compare live prices from reputable suppliers across 2.7 million UK postcodes.
Your local heating oil price, once a week.
Heating oil is about 65% dearer than it was a year ago. The UK average on our tracker is 88.25p a litre today, so a 1,000-litre fill costs about £883. The same fill was around £534 in late August 2025.
The good news is that prices have come off the top. A litre is down about 4.6p on the week and roughly 3p below where the month started. Brent crude, the benchmark that sets what refiners pay for oil, is around $90 a barrel. It touched a one-week low on Tuesday as traders shrugged off a fresh round of American sanctions on Iran, having risen more than 5% the week before on talk of the toughest sanctions yet.
Crude is only half the story this month, and the other half explains why heating oil has not fallen as fast. Kerosene is a middle distillate, the same family of fuel as diesel, and the refining margin on diesel hit a record above $100 a barrel in mid-August, roughly five times its normal level. It is still near $100 now, and northwest Europe's gasoil margin is around $78. American distillate stocks are the lowest for this time of year since the mid-1990s, and Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries have taken more diesel out of world trade. In short, there is enough crude and not enough refining, which lands on kerosene as much as on the pumps.
The Strait of Hormuz, the sea lane that normally carries about a fifth of the world's oil, is open but running well below normal. Roughly 20 million barrels a day passed through it before the war, and about 8 million a day of that is currently lost. The American navy says it has escorted more than 660 million barrels through since early May. For all that, today's price is still around 49p a litre below the 137.6p high reached in March.
Supplier heating oil price per litre (1,000L)
Source: Fueltool supplier prices
29 August 2026
Heating oil is about 65% dearer than it was a year ago. The UK average on our tracker is 88.25p a litre today, so a 1,000-litre fill costs about £883. The same fill was around £534 in late August 2025.
The good news is that prices have come off the top. A litre is down about 4.6p on the week and roughly 3p below where the month started. Brent crude, the benchmark that sets what refiners pay for oil, is around $90 a barrel. It touched a one-week low on Tuesday as traders shrugged off a fresh round of American sanctions on Iran, having risen more than 5% the week before on talk of the toughest sanctions yet.
Crude is only half the story this month, and the other half explains why heating oil has not fallen as fast. Kerosene is a middle distillate, the same family of fuel as diesel, and the refining margin on diesel hit a record above $100 a barrel in mid-August, roughly five times its normal level. It is still near $100 now, and northwest Europe's gasoil margin is around $78. American distillate stocks are the lowest for this time of year since the mid-1990s, and Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries have taken more diesel out of world trade. In short, there is enough crude and not enough refining, which lands on kerosene as much as on the pumps.
The Strait of Hormuz, the sea lane that normally carries about a fifth of the world's oil, is open but running well below normal. Roughly 20 million barrels a day passed through it before the war, and about 8 million a day of that is currently lost. The American navy says it has escorted more than 660 million barrels through since early May. For all that, today's price is still around 49p a litre below the 137.6p high reached in March.