Heating Oil News

Attacks on ships in the Middle East have knocked back hopes that oil would keep getting cheaper. Fighters backed by Iran struck a cargo ship in the Red Sea on Tuesday, killing six crew, and hardly any traffic is moving through the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping lane that normally carries about a fifth of the world's oil.

Our price tracker puts the UK average at about 87ppl today, so a 1,000-litre fill costs about £870. That is roughly £40 less than at the start of August, though prices have edged back up over the past two days as the news from the Gulf worsened.

The bigger picture is still a hard one: heating oil is more than 50% dearer than it was a year ago, when the same fill cost about £560. Prices do remain below the peak of about 93ppl reached on 22 July, at the height of the crisis.

What happens next rests on two things: whether America and Iran get back around the table, and whether ships start moving safely through Hormuz again. Demand for heating oil is at its summer low ahead of the autumn restock, which is helping to keep a lid on prices while the talks stall.