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Let’s rewind 2 years to July 2014, Brent crude was on the market at around $110 a barrel, the average price for a litre of fuel was £1.33 and heating oil was around 60p/litre. We were all feeling the pinch and looking at ways to reduce our fuel usage in our cars and also for heating our homes.

However, from this point there was a sudden change in oil markets and the price of crude oil started to tumble, prices at the pumps fell and heating our homes became considerably cheaper. Our mood changed, things were a little better, we had more expendable cash and concerns over the cost of fuelling our cars and heating our homes started to disappear.

In January 2016, crude was at just over $30 a barrel, you could fuel your car for under £1/litre and our oil tanks were being filled at less than 30p/litre, half the price of 18 months earlier. We didn’t need to think about our oil fired heating systems because it was almost as cheap as mains gas to run.

Forward to today, crude is over $50 a barrel, the price at the pumps is averaging around £1.10/litre and fuel oil is in the region of 35p/litre, meaning rises in fuel prices to the consumer of between 15-25% in the last 6 months with barely a comment being raised. The new Saudi Oil Minister has declared that the glut is over, and is now expecting a continual upward trend in price.

Considering the rise in crude prices, which were always unstainable, of approximately 70% in the past 6 months, surely this is something we all need to be aware of and if the current trend continues it won’t be too long before we have reverted back to the 2014 prices and all the same concerns are there, expensive fuel and heating costing more than we would like.

So while we have all been enjoying cheap fuel prices, can we afford to be naive enough to think that this will continue? If we fast forward 18 months we could very easily be back at 2014 prices and possibly beyond.

With the current RHI scheme still in place and the opportunity to improve your heating system to a renewable solution with lower operating costs and long term security can you afford to ignore the rising oil price any longer?

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