The Maine Agenda › Live in Maine
Heating Oil and Propane in Greater Portland: What It Costs and What the Law Gives You Before You Sign
The sales call comes in August. It is friendly and it is not a scam, and it will ask you to send a fuel dealer several thousand dollars in the middle of a heat wave for oil you will not burn until November. Everything you will read while deciding was written by somebody who sells the plan. Search "should I pre-buy heating oil" and the first page is dealer blogs, a Massachusetts fuel company, and a content farm. Not one of them is going to tell you that Maine has a specific statute governing that contract, that your dealer had to register with the state by June 30 to be allowed to offer it, or that you can look up in about forty seconds whether they did.
This is the part nobody sells you. It is also the part that is free.
What fuel actually costs here
The Maine Department of Energy Resources surveys delivered fuel retailers and publishes cash prices by region. Greater Portland is its own column, listed as Southeast. In the most recent survey posted at the time of writing, dated June 15, 2026, the numbers for our region were:
- Heating oil: $4.75 a gallon average, with a high of $5.40 and a low of $4.25
- Kerosene: $5.76 a gallon
- Propane: $3.59 a gallon
Three things in that table are worth more than the headline number.
The spread is the story, not the average. A dollar fifteen separates the cheapest surveyed dealer in this region from the most expensive. On a 250-gallon fill that is about $288, for the identical commodity, delivered to the identical driveway. Almost nobody shops it, because oil feels like a utility and utilities feel like something you are assigned rather than something you choose. It is not a utility. It is a delivered commodity with a competitive market and a two hundred and eighty-eight dollar gap in it.
We pay the most in Maine for propane. Greater Portland's $3.59 is the highest regional propane price in the state, 71 cents above northern Maine's $2.88 and 35 cents above the statewide average. Kerosene is the same shape, $5.76 here against $5.41 up north. Heating oil runs the other way: our $4.75 is the joint lowest regional average in the state. If your house is on propane in Cumberland County, you are on the wrong side of the widest geographic penalty in Maine's fuel market, and the reason for that is in the propane section below.
The published price is not the price you will be quoted for a contract. DOER says so on its own page: these are spot cash prices, and specifically not pre-buy, introductory, or otherwise discounted prices. The propane figures assume you burn at least 900 gallons a year on a 30-day cash or credit basis. If propane only runs your range and your hot water, you are paying more per gallon than that table says, sometimes much more.
One honest note on the source. DOER states it updates this survey weekly during the heating season and every other week in the off season. At the time of writing in early August, the newest survey on the page was still June 15, roughly seven weeks back against a stated two-week cadence. That is worth knowing before you treat the number on that page as today's number in the middle of summer. It becomes reliable again in the fall. Check the date stamp above the table, every time.
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Pre-buy, cap, budget: what you are actually choosing between
Dealers offer three or four things and use the words loosely, so define them before you sign anything.
Pre-buy (prepaid). You pay now, in full, for a fixed number of gallons at a fixed price. You have bought the fuel. If prices fall, you paid too much and there is no mechanism to fix that. If your dealer fails, you are a creditor.
Cap or ceiling. You pay a fee, sometimes several hundred dollars, for the right to pay no more than a set price. If the market falls below the cap you pay the market. It is an insurance premium, and like any premium it is priced so the seller expects to win. Ask what the fee is in dollars, then divide it by your annual gallons. That is the per-gallon cost of the protection, and it is the only honest way to compare a cap against a pre-buy.
Fixed price without prepayment. A locked per-gallon rate, paid on delivery. You take price risk in one direction only and you keep your cash. Where it is offered it is usually the most sensible option on the sheet.
Budget plan. Not a price program at all. It spreads your expected annual cost over eleven or twelve level payments. It solves a cash flow problem and does nothing about price. Dealers frequently pitch it alongside the price programs in a way that blurs the two.
We are not going to tell you which to take, because anyone who tells you confidently is guessing about the price of a globally traded commodity six months out. What we will say is this: the decision is a bet on distillate prices, the house has better information than you do, and the only part of it you can control with certainty is which dealer you hand the money to. So control that part.
The Maine law nobody mentions on the phone
Guaranteed price plans for home heating oil, kerosene, and propane are governed by 10 M.R.S. section 1110. It is short, it is readable, and it is on the Legislature's own site. Here is what it requires.
The contract must be in writing, and the terms must be conspicuous. Disclosure has to be in plain language, has to immediately follow the language about the price or service it affects, and has to be printed in no less than 12-point boldface type of uniform font. A solicitation that could turn into a contract when you respond has to disclose its terms in plain language too. If the terms are buried in six-point grey type at the bottom, that is not a stylistic choice, it is a violation.
Your dealer had to register by June 30. Any dealer offering prepaid contracts must register that intent annually with the Commissioner of Professional and Financial Regulation, with a $100 fee, by June 30 each year. They must also file an annual report by October 31 showing how the contracts are secured, on a form that warns that a false statement is a Class D crime.
The money has to be secured, one of three ways. A dealer may not enter a prepaid contract unless it holds either fixed-price supply contracts covering at least 75 percent of the maximum gallons it has committed to deliver, or a surety bond worth at least 50 percent of all consumer funds taken, or a letter of credit worth 100 percent of those funds. Note what that means in the first case: a quarter of the gallons a dealer has sold forward may be unhedged by design, and the law permits it.
Three things must appear in your contract. The total money you paid, the maximum number of gallons committed for delivery, and a statement that performance is secured by one of those three options. If any of the three is missing, do not sign.
Undelivered fuel gets refunded in 30 days. At the end date of the contract, the contract price of any fuel you paid for and did not take must be reimbursed within 30 days unless you agreed otherwise in the contract. Read the "unless" clause. That is where a rollover into next season hides.
A violation of any of this is a violation of the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act, which matters because it gives you a real remedy rather than a strongly worded letter.
The forty-second check. The Department of Professional and Financial Regulation runs a public company lookup for exactly this purpose, at pfr.maine.gov. Search your dealer before you write the check. A registered dealer is not a guarantee of anything, but an unregistered one offering you a prepaid contract in September is telling you something about how the rest of the business is run.
Delivery, surcharges, and the rules that only exist half the year
The Attorney General has rules under the Unfair Trade Practices Act governing residential heating oil and kerosene sales, called Chapter 100. They are in force from October 15 through April 30 and not the rest of the year, which is its own useful fact: the August sales call happens outside the window.
Inside the window, the rules give you more than most people know.
A dealer cannot refuse to deliver just because you owe them money, provided you have cash or government-guaranteed payment for the fuel you are asking for, the dealer regularly serves your area, and you request at least 20 gallons. That is not an emergency run. It means you go on the next scheduled trip to your area.
The surcharge rule has a number in it. If you order less than 50 percent of your tank's capacity or 100 gallons, whichever is less, the dealer may add a delivery surcharge of up to $20. On a standard 275-gallon tank, the threshold works out to 100 gallons. Order 90 and you may pay the $20. Order 100 and you may not. For an unscheduled delivery the dealer must tell you roughly what the extra charge will be, why, and when the next scheduled run is, and the charge cannot exceed what the trip actually cost them. If you call on a day they were coming to your road anyway, there is no unscheduled charge at all.
"Established customer" is a defined status, and it takes two purchases. Buy your next two fills from a dealer and you are established, which entitles you to the same treatment as their other established customers. If they waive minimums for established customers in an emergency, they have to waive yours.
A quoted price binds them. A dealer may not charge you more than the current market price it advertises, and when it quotes you a price and you order, it has to deliver at that price, unless it specifically told you the price is set on the day of delivery. Ask which one it is, in those words, and note the answer.
Propane is a different animal, and the tank is why
Most residential propane customers in Maine do not own their tank. The dealer does. Maine law prohibits a propane dealer from filling a tank it does not own, which the Attorney General's office cites to 10 M.R.S.A. section 1658-A. Follow that to its conclusion: if your dealer owns the tank on the side of your house, no competitor can legally fill it, and your ability to shop for a better price is zero until you buy a tank or have one swapped.
That is the mechanism behind the price gap at the top of this page. Oil is a shoppable commodity in Greater Portland and propane largely is not, and the surveyed prices in our region reflect exactly that.
If you own your tank, you can shop freely, and you should. If you do not, ask two questions before you renew anything: what would it cost to buy this tank out, and what does a swap to another supplier involve. The answers are sometimes better than people assume. And if the dealer that owns your tank refuses to deliver or starts attaching terms that were never disclosed, that is a Consumer Protection Division matter, especially if you are low on fuel.
One more propane protection worth knowing: if you are on a contract for automatic delivery and they miss you badly enough that you run low or run out, you should not be charged an emergency delivery fee for their failure.
The winter shutoff protection you have heard about does not cover you
This one costs people real money because the misunderstanding is so reasonable. Maine does restrict winter disconnections. Those protections live with the Public Utilities Commission and apply to regulated utilities: your electric company, your natural gas company, your water company. Winter disconnection by a regulated utility is illegal unless the PUC's Consumer Assistance Division has approved it in advance, and that division takes complaints at 1-800-452-4699.
Your oil dealer and your propane dealer are not utilities. None of that applies to them. What applies is the 20-gallon cash rule above, which is a floor and not a safety net.
If paying for heat is the actual problem rather than optimizing the price of it, the program is LIHEAP, administered through MaineHousing, reachable at 1-877-544-3271, and 211 Maine will connect you to fuel assistance any hour of the day. Apply early. The money is finite and the season is not.
If you burn wood, the cord is a legal measurement
Maine defines it, which means a dealer cannot improvise. A standard or stacked cord is 128 cubic feet, four feet by four feet by eight feet, ranked and well stowed, with gaps deducted. Firewood usually arrives loose, and Maine defines that separately: a loose or thrown cord of 12-inch to 16-inch wood is 180 cubic feet, and 24-inch wood is 195 cubic feet. The words "rack," "pile," and "truckload" are prohibited in firewood sales precisely because they mean whatever the seller wants them to mean.
You are also owed a delivery ticket, by law, listing both names and addresses, the date, the quantity, the price, a description of the wood, and a statement of quality. Ask for it at the time of delivery. It is the only evidence you will have in February that you were promised seasoned hardwood.
The short version
Look up your dealer's registration. Read the boldface. Get the three required disclosures in writing. Ask whether a quoted price is a quoted price or a day-of-delivery price. Order 100 gallons rather than 90. And if you are on propane and do not own your tank, treat that as the single most expensive fact about your house, because in this region it probably is.
For the rest of what running a household here costs, our Portland cost of living breakdown has the verified numbers on housing, taxes, and utilities, and the property tax rates by town matter more to your annual budget than any fuel contract will. If you have just arrived, the moving to Portland guide covers the rest of the first-ninety-days list.
FAQ
What does heating oil cost in Greater Portland right now?
In the Maine Department of Energy Resources survey dated June 15, 2026, heating oil in the Southeast and Greater Portland region averaged $4.75 a gallon, ranging from $4.25 to $5.40 among surveyed dealers. Kerosene averaged $5.76 and propane $3.59. DOER publishes this survey weekly from September through April and every other week in the off season, so always read the date above the table rather than assuming the posted figure is current.
Should I pre-buy heating oil or take the market price?
There is no honest general answer, because a pre-buy is a bet on distillate prices six months out and the dealer has better information than you do. What you can control is verifiable: whether the dealer is registered with the state, how the contract is secured, what the cap fee costs per gallon, and what happens to fuel you paid for and did not burn. Decide those first, and treat the price bet as the smaller question.
Is my fuel dealer allowed to sell me a prepaid contract?
Only if it registered its intent with the Maine Commissioner of Professional and Financial Regulation by June 30 of that year and pays the $100 fee, and only if it holds one of three forms of security: fixed-price supply contracts for at least 75 percent of committed gallons, a surety bond for at least 50 percent of consumer funds, or a letter of credit for 100 percent. You can verify registration yourself through the public company lookup at pfr.maine.gov.
Can my oil dealer refuse to deliver if I owe them money?
No, not if three conditions are met. Under the Attorney General's Chapter 100 rules, which are in force from October 15 through April 30, a dealer must deliver on its next scheduled trip to your area if you have cash or government-guaranteed payment for the fuel requested, the dealer regularly serves your area, and you are asking for at least 20 gallons. It does not entitle you to an unscheduled emergency run.
Why can I not shop around for propane?
Because in Maine a propane dealer may not fill a tank it does not own, and most residential customers rent their tank from their dealer. That single rule is why Greater Portland's surveyed propane price of $3.59 is the highest of any region in the state while our heating oil price is the joint lowest. If you own your tank you can shop freely. If you do not, ask what a buyout or a tank swap would cost before you renew.
Can my heat be shut off in winter if I cannot pay?
Maine's winter disconnection protections apply to regulated utilities such as electric and natural gas companies, where a shutoff requires advance approval from the Public Utilities Commission's Consumer Assistance Division. Oil and propane dealers are not utilities and those protections do not reach them. If affording heat is the problem, apply to LIHEAP through MaineHousing at 1-877-544-3271 or call 211 Maine, and do it before the season starts.
How much wood is a cord supposed to be?
A standard or stacked cord is 128 cubic feet, four by four by eight, ranked and well stowed with air gaps deducted. Because firewood is usually delivered loose, Maine also defines a loose or thrown cord as 180 cubic feet for 12-inch to 16-inch wood and 195 cubic feet for 24-inch wood. Terms like rack, pile, and truckload are prohibited in firewood sales, and the seller owes you a written delivery ticket describing the wood and its quality.