Nunavut homes heat with delivered fuel oil, full stop. No gas network exists, and electricity is itself made from costly diesel, so oil burned from an on-site storage tank is the universal standard. The oil arrives by the same annual sealift as the diesel, which makes storage and fuel security, not fuel choice, the real story, a story whose roots reach back to the qulliq, the Inuit oil lamp.
The belief: heating is a choice of fuel
Elsewhere in Canada, heating is a decision: gas or electric, oil or a heat pump, weighed on price and comfort. In Nunavut there is effectively no choice to make. With no gas mains and diesel-based electricity that is expensive to use for heat, delivered oil is the practical option for nearly every home. The meaningful question is not which fuel, but how much you have stored and whether it will last to the next sealift.
The practical reality: oil, tanks, and the sealift clock
Heating oil reaches Nunavut the only way bulk fuel can: by ship, during the short summer window when the sea ice clears, then stored in community tank farms and household tanks. That single annual delivery has to carry a home through a winter that is among the longest and coldest in the country. So the rhythms of Nunavut heating are unlike anywhere else: you monitor a tank gauge the way southerners watch a thermostat, top-ups in deep winter can be difficult or impossible, and a community that misjudges its resupply has no pipeline or grid to fall back on. Heat retention, keeping the warmth you have already paid to generate, matters enormously, which is why the efficiency guide in this series focuses on insulation and draft-proofing rather than fuel switching.
In the south, running low on heat means an inconvenient bill. In Nunavut it can mean a frozen home with no quick way to refill, because the fuel for the whole year already arrived months ago by ship. That is why fuel is stored, watched and rationed with a seriousness southern households rarely need.
The qulliq: warmth before oil furnaces
Long before furnaces and sealifted oil, Inuit families stayed warm by the qulliq, a shallow crescent-shaped soapstone lamp that burned seal or whale oil with a carefully tended wick of moss or cotton grass. A single qulliq heated and lit a snow house or tent, melted snow for water, cooked food and dried clothing, and it was traditionally kept by women, whose skill at trimming the wick controlled the flame. The lamp is more than history: it endures as a ceremonial and cultural symbol of warmth, home and Inuit resilience, lit at gatherings and openings across the territory. Its name lives on in Qulliq Energy Corporation, the utility that now supplies the territory\'s heat and power, a direct line from the seal-oil flame to the diesel plant.
What this means for a Nunavut household
Where the levers actually are when fuel choice is off the table.
Track your oil level through the winter so you are never surprised. Mid-winter top-ups can be hard to arrange, so plan against the annual resupply, not against next-day delivery.
Because every litre is expensive and hard to replace, heat retention is the highest-value move: seal drafts, add insulation, and reduce the warmth escaping through windows and doors.
Know your community's resupply timing and your own backup options. The outage-and-fuel-security guide in this series covers cold-weather preparation in detail.
Where feasible, on-site renewables under QEC's net metering program can offset some electricity use, though oil remains the heating mainstay for now.
