28th September 2026
For households in rural Caithness, the heating-oil problem has suddenly become much more serious.
Many people have delayed ordering because they can still remember paying around 66p a litre earlier this year. But the price now confronting households is on an entirely different scale.
BoilerJuice's latest Scotland price indicator is showing around 121p a litre for a 1,000-litre order. Prices vary according to location, quantity and delivery arrangements, but the direction of travel is clear.
For someone needing 1,000 litres, that is roughly £1,200.
It explains why some households have been reluctant to fill their tanks.
The obvious question is whether to bite the bullet and buy the oil, hoping prices subsequently fall, or to change the way the house is heated.
For a single-person household, there may be another possibility.
Instead of automatically heating the whole house, why not concentrate the available heat on the room actually being used?
That could mean using the oil boiler when whole-house heating is genuinely required, but relying more on a small electric heater when only one room needs warming. Closing doors, reducing draughts, wearing warmer clothing and using blankets or other forms of personal warmth can further reduce the amount of energy required.
It is important not to misunderstand the economics. Electricity is not cheaper per unit of heat than heating oil. The potential saving comes from heating a much smaller area for a much shorter period.
There is also a psychological element.
For someone living alone, refusing to automatically spend £1,200 filling an oil tank isn't necessarily simply about being reluctant to spend money. It can be about independence and control.
There can be a natural reluctance simply to accept a much higher price and hand over the money when there are other ways of managing the household.
But there is an equally important warning.
Not everybody can adopt the same strategy.
A reasonably healthy and mobile person may be able to tolerate a cooler house and use additional clothing or targeted heating without too much difficulty. Someone who is frail, unwell, has poor circulation or is particularly vulnerable to the cold may need a warmer home for comfort and wellbeing.
Saving money should not mean sitting in an uncomfortably cold house.
So perhaps the question this winter isn't simply "Can I afford to fill the tank?"
It might be:
"How much of my house do I actually need to heat today?"
For someone living alone in a reasonably insulated house, the answer may be considerably less than the whole building.
That doesn't mean abandoning the oil boiler. It means using it more selectively.
And there is another reason not to gamble everything on prices falling. Heating-oil prices can change regularly as suppliers alter their rates, while demand, weather, crude-oil prices, refining costs, exchange rates and geopolitical events can all affect prices.
Nobody knows whether today's £1.20 will prove to be the winter high or simply another step upwards.
That leaves households with a difficult balancing act.
Keep enough oil to avoid running out.
Shop around.
Don't panic-buy a full tank simply because winter is approaching.
But don't assume that the only alternative to a full tank is going cold.
For some households, the answer this winter may be a mixture of oil heating, targeted electric heating and simply using less heat.
There is a difference between living in a cold house because you cannot afford to heat it and choosing not to heat rooms that nobody is using.
With heating oil now around £1.20 a litre in Scotland, that difference could be worth hundreds of pounds over the winter.