NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote

No one has used oil here now for a hell of a long time;
Much more expensive than electricity or gas.

As far as I know, most (*) houses in the UK use gas if it is available, or
oil if there's no gas supply;

We use LPG gas cylinders if there is no gas supply.
Normally two cylinders so you just switch cylinder
when one runs out and get the empty one replaced
or even bigger 200kg cylinders which are filled from
the truck, rather like oil is delivered.

either way heating water for circulating through radiators.

We dont have much in the way of wet systems like that,
the whole house heating is normally done with hot air.

Some people may opt for LPG, or for heat pumps or storage heaters or
bottled gas (**). Our last house had no gas, so we used oil - we had a big
enough tank that we could buy it at the best price, usually spring or
autumn, avoiding the peak demand of winter and summer (summer is peak
demand in hot countries for air-con, apparently ***). Our supplier had a
price break at 1000 litres, and our 1400 litre tank allowed us some
flexibility about timing while still letting us fit a minimum of 1000
litres per delivery - usually. It's a hell of an outlay all at once, but
then nothing for a long time after that.

We use LPG instead of oil in that situation, with a
fixed 200KG or bigger when there is no gas supply.

(*) A bold statement: I'm bound to be proved wrong by statistics that
someone will quote ;-)

(**) It probably made sense for my parents to use bottled gas for the
cottage, given that it was only really used in the summer, apart from
frost-free heating all year round. But my wife and I are living there full
time at the moment, having sold our house and not yet found another, and
the cost for regular heating is astronomical. I'm not sure whether it
costs more to use only gas, or to use coal in the stove in the lounge so
the central heating doesn't need to work so hard.

(***) I've never understood why greater use of air-con, which is powered
by electricity, should drive up diesel and heating oil prices, especially
in countries like the UK which don't have so much usage of air-con.

That isnt what happens. The diesel and heating oil prices are
determined by world oil prices, just like the price of petro. is.