Heating oil is made from crude oil
Source: Stock photography (copyrighted)
Did you know?
Heating oil is dyed red.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires heating oil and other distillate fuel oils that are not for highway use to be colored with a red dye. The red color identfies the fuel as exempt from the federal, state, and local taxes applied to fuels sold for use on public roadways, and as illegal for use in vehicles that normally operate on roadways.
Heating oil is a petroleum product refined from crude oil. At refineries, crude oil is processed into different kinds of fuel, including gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, jet fuel, kerosene, and lubricating oil. Many Americans, especially in the Northeast, use heating oil for space heating and water heating.
Heating oil and diesel fuel are closely related products called distillates. The Northeast is the largest regional consumer of heating oil, and several states in the Northeast are lowering the allowable sulfur content of heating oil. Some of these reductions require heating oil to meet the same 15 parts per million sulfur content limit that diesel fuel must meet. (See the April 18, 2012 Today in Energy article).