I just got an oil fill, lowest price I have seen in a few years.
What I don't see is the price of cord wood coming down proportionately, at least locally.
I fell some trees, buy some logs, buy some rounds, buy some splits, scrounge a few cords a year. I have a pretty good idea what is involved. As low as oil is right now it isn't worth it to me to work part time at selling green wood.
As a homeowner I see one 20MBTU seasoned cord (assuming it's an honest cord), as replacing 144 gallons of #2 oil, if I am willing to work for free moving the wood around. If #2 oil is $1.50, a 20MBTU cord is worth $216 me, maximum. Oil at $2.50/ gallon, $360 per cord, max. At 3.50/ gallon a 20M BTU cord replaces $504 worth of #2 oil.
A year ago, 10-30-2014 I was paying $3.70/ gallon for #2 and that was the lowest price I had seen in years, green wood was $250/ cord delivered as splits. No brainer, I paid $165/ cord for green logs.
On the other hand, green cords delivered as rounds are currently $250/ cord delivered to my house, but I got a fill this week at $2.35/ gallon, so that green cord is only going to be worth $338 after I split, season and carry to the stove.
I am switching to buying spruce only, lower BTU, less desirable, less expensive. The trick is local woodcutters have to fell some spruce to keep producing the birch people want to buy. I am going to put up every stick of spruce I can season since my stove runs fine on it.
As an oil producing state, when I look at oil prices I see the Saudis sticking it to Iran. Iran is/was only allowed to sell X many gallons of oil annually under the old sanctions. By producing lots of oil and keeping the price down, the Saudis were seeing to it that Iran got as little money as possible for the oil they could sell. The Saudis are going to be running low on cash in about 5 years at current spending levels. If Alaska returns to 2007 spending levels we'll still have cash in the bank when the Saudis go broke. If we stay at 2008 spending we'll be broke before the Saudis.
I don't see the Saudis blowing three generations of excess oil income in five years. They like having money in the bank, and they like having lots of money in the bank. All of us can look back over our own lifetimes at the price we pay at the pump for automotive gasoline and know the price of oil is going to go back up, probably higher than it has ever been before, again. Probably sooner rather than later.
If you have room on your property, you could season as usual, burn minimal wood, burn cheap oil and build up a stock of seasoned wood for when oil goes back up...