This week's Maine fuel prices, the arithmetic on how much you burned last winter, the same heat priced on oil, kerosene, propane, pellets and wood, and where to ask for help paying for it.
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From Town Tools. For the current version, visit https://www.towntools.org/damariscotta-maine-us/heating-costs
(2 months ago)
$4.97 a gallon
Heating oil, statewide average per gallon — surveyed August 3, 2026.
Heating is the biggest bill of the year in most houses here, and it does not arrive month by month — it arrives as a truck and a delivery slip for several hundred dollars at a time. This page puts three things in one place: what fuel costs this week, what a winter of it comes to on your own usage, and who to ring if paying for it is going to be a problem.
What fuel costs this week
Fuel
Average price
Lowest to highest
Surveyed
Heating oilgallon
$4.97
$4.04 – $5.40
August 3, 2026
Kerosenegallon
$5.85
—
August 3, 2026
Propanegallon
$3.20
—
August 3, 2026
Wood pelletston
$357.00
—
August 3, 2026
Firewoodcord
$355.00
—
August 3, 2026
The state surveys delivered-fuel retailers every week from September through April, and every other week from May to August. The wood and pellet figures come from the same survey's informal poll of dealers.
These are spot cash prices, in the state's own words — not pre-buy, not a contract price, not a discount, and not an offer from anyone. Your own dealer's price will differ, and sometimes by a lot: on 3 August 2026 the survey found heating oil at $4.04 a gallon somewhere in Maine and $5.40 somewhere else. Ring around before you order.
These are statewide figures
The prices above are statewide averages. The state also publishes six regional columns, but it does not publish anywhere — not on the page, not in the weekly PDF — which towns or counties belong to which region. There is therefore no honest way to say which column covers Damariscotta, so this page uses the statewide average and tells you that is what it is doing, rather than guessing at a region.
Heating oil: The low and high are the cheapest and dearest prices the survey found anywhere in Maine that week, not a range for this area.
Kerosene: Used in monitor heaters and where a tank sits outdoors, because it does not gel in the cold the way oil can.
Propane: The state's propane figure is a 30-day cash or credit price for households buying at least 900 gallons a year. A household on propane only for cooking or hot water generally pays more per gallon than this.
Wood pellets: From an informal survey of dealers: Maine-made pellets in 40 lb bags, delivered. Bulk pellets may cost a little more.
Firewood: From an informal survey of dealers, based on a minimum two-cord purchase, delivered.
What a winter of it costs
Your delivery slips are the best answer there is. A rough figure still gives you a useful number.
Last winter ran 6,607 heating degree days here. An average of the winters below is 6,170. Ticking the box scales what you bought by the difference.
$3,976
What that costs now
800 gallons at $4.97 a gallon
$568
Set aside each month, over 7 months
the same total, spread across the heating season
78%
Of the fuel you pay for, this much becomes heat in your rooms
87% of it gets burned into heat, and 90% of that heat survives the pipes or ducts on the way
The same warmth, bought another way
Every line below buys exactly as much heat as your oil boiler does above — no colder, no warmer. The prices are this week’s published averages.
Setup
You would need
At this week’s price
Oil boileryours
800 gallons
$3,976
Oil furnace
890 gallons
$4,422
Kerosene room heater
740 gallons
$4,326
Propane boiler
1,136 gallons
$3,636
Pellet stove
7.0 tons
$2,506
Pellet boiler
7.1 tons
$2,547
Wood stove
5.4 cords
$1,921
Those are prices, and prices are all they are. This page does not tell anybody to change fuel, and it is in no position to: it knows nothing about what a new boiler or stove would cost to buy and fit, whether your chimney suits it, where you would put a ton of pellets, who would carry them in, or what happens in a power cut. Every line is the cost of the fuel alone, at this week's published average, for exactly the same amount of warmth.
It does not know your house
Was last winter a cold one?
A heating degree day counts one degree that a day’s average temperature sat below 65°F. Add them up over a winter and you have a plain measure of how hard the winter worked your heating — and of why one year’s deliveries do not match the next.
The last 10 full winters here averaged 6,170 degree days. 2025–26 came to 6,607 — about 7% colder than that average.
Winter
Heating degree days
2025–26
6,607
2024–25
6,296
2023–24
5,865
2022–23
5,658
2021–22
6,049
2020–21
5,931
2019–20
6,203
2018–19
6,708
2017–18
6,299
2016–17
6,087
Weather record complete to October 12, 2026.
Daily temperatures from Open-Meteo’s ERA5 reanalysis (CC BY 4.0). This is model data on a grid of about 10 km, not a thermometer in the village. Open-Meteo
Help with the bill
HEAP, the Home Energy Assistance Program, helps homeowners and renters pay for heat, and can also cover emergency fuel delivery, some energy-related repairs and utility payments. Applications for the 2026–2027 season opened on 3 August 2026 and run until 29 May 2027, or until the money runs out — MaineHousing asks people to apply as early as they can. Crisis help for a household nearly out of fuel (ECIP) runs from 1 November 2026 to 30 April 2027; you start it by filing a HEAP application and then calling your agency.
The most a household can earn and still qualify — 2026–2027 season
Household
In a month
In a year
1 person
$3,173
$38,070
2 people
$4,149
$49,784
3 people
$5,125
$61,498
4 people
$6,101
$73,213
5 people
$7,077
$84,927
6 people
$8,053
$96,641
7 people
$8,236
$98,837
8 people
$8,420
$101,033
9 people
$8,603
$103,230
10 people
$8,786
$105,426
More than ten people in the household? Your Community Action Agency will tell you the limit — MaineHousing does not publish one.
What this page does not price
Electric heat and heat pumps
This page prices the fuels the state surveys at a single average — oil, kerosene, propane, pellets and firewood. It deliberately does not price electric heat or heat pumps, because the state publishes those as a range across utilities rather than as one figure: on 3 August 2026, $0.286 to $0.313 a kilowatt-hour for electric baseboard, and an equivalent $0.098 to $0.107 for an air-source heat pump, which Efficiency Maine rates at 2.93 times the efficiency of electric resistance heat. Picking a point inside a published range would be inventing a price. Efficiency Maine's own comparison lets you put in the rate from your own bill. Efficiency Maine's heating cost comparison.
Worth knowing
The spread is worth more than the average
On 3 August 2026 the state's survey found heating oil at $4.04 a gallon somewhere in Maine and $5.40 somewhere else. Across an 800-gallon winter that difference is $1,088. The statewide average is a useful anchor and a poor substitute for ringing three dealers. this week's survey.
Two winters are never the same winter
The winter of 2025–26 ran 6,607 heating degree days here, against an average of about 6,170 across the ten winters before it — roughly 7% harder than usual. That is most of the difference between one year's fuel order and the next, and it is why last winter's gallons are a starting point rather than an answer. Open-Meteo's ERA5 archive.
This is arithmetic on a number you typed and nothing more. It does not know your house, your windows, how warm you keep it, or how much of your oil goes to hot water rather than heat. The best figure to put in is the one on last winter's delivery slips — add up the gallons. Anything else is a guess, and the answer can only be as good as the guess.
Each setup's efficiency above is Efficiency Maine's published figure — the state's own energy trust, and the same source the Department of Energy Resources uses for its own fuel comparison. Two numbers are multiplied: how much of the fuel the burner turns into heat, and how much of that heat survives the ducts or pipes on the way to the rooms. A well-maintained system beats the published figure and a neglected one falls short of it.
The table above is MaineHousing's published income limit for the 2026–2027 season, printed exactly as it stands. This page does not and cannot decide whether you qualify — only your Community Action Agency does, and it applies other rules and allowances too, including a deduction for medical costs that can bring a household from over the line back under it. If you are anywhere near these figures, ring them and ask.
Find the office that covers you
Midcoast Maine Community Action
Handles HEAP for everyone in Lincoln and Sagadahoc Counties, Damariscotta included
MaineHousing's find-your-agency lookupPut your ZIP code into the box on MaineHousing's HEAP page and it names the agency that covers you. Worth doing if you have moved recently, or if you are reading this for somebody in another county.
Applying
You can apply online through MaineHousing's ECOS system, which also carries the application guides and tutorials. To apply by phone or in person instead, call Midcoast Maine Community Action first and make an appointment. the online application.
What to have ready before you start
Names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers for everyone in the household; proof of gross income for all of them; recent full energy and utility bills showing how much you use; and what you heat with. MaineHousing is blunt about this: an application missing any requested document will be denied. MaineHousing's list of documents.