Your October Propane Bill Is About to Sting

A tanker left the Texas coast last week. It was full of propane. It was headed to Mumbai, seven thousand miles away.

That same propane heats homes across rural America. Six million families count on it to stay warm. The wholesale price just jumped 18% in a single month.

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Here's what happened. India used to buy most of its cooking gas from three places. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Ninety percent of it. Every ship came through the Strait of Hormuz. Then the war shut the strait down.

India had to find gas fast. They came to Texas. Their state oil firms signed a deal for 2.2 million tons of American propane this year. Big tankers pull out of the Gulf Coast every few days. All headed east.

Here's the problem. Those tankers pull from the same storage tanks that fill the trucks that come to your neighbor's house. It's a place called Mont Belvieu, right outside Houston. It sits on top of the biggest set of salt caves in the world. That's where America keeps its propane. And right now, half the world is lined up to buy from it.

For years, American propane was a home thing. Cheap. Plentiful. Then the US started shipping it out. Last year, we became the biggest propane exporter on earth. Most folks in this country still think of it as ours. It isn't just ours anymore.

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India isn't alone. Japan is buying more. South Korea is buying more. Even Europe is pulling from Texas because Middle East gas isn't moving. Every one of those buyers is bidding against a farmer in Iowa. The farmer doesn't know he's in the auction.

I don't think most people realize how propane works out in the country. It isn't like a gas pump. You don't fill up when the price drops. A truck comes once every few weeks. It pulls up to the tank behind the house. You pay whatever the invoice says.

I get it. Most people who heat with propane are older. Many are on fixed incomes. They live in Missouri, Michigan, Maine, upstate New York. They don't watch futures prices. They just wait for the truck.

And the truck is coming soon. October is right around the corner. That first fill of the season is a big one. Most families put in 300 or 400 gallons at once. All at the going price.

Do the math. If your fill last year cost $900, this year it could run past $1,100. And winter hasn't even started.

Here's what worries me. The spot price at Mont Belvieu hit 80 cents a gallon on September 4. That's up 15% from a year ago. Up 18% in the past month alone. Winter draw-down usually starts in November. Tanks empty out fast. Prices climb when tanks drop.

Nobody knows how bad this gets. If the war drags on, India keeps buying. If it ends fast, maybe things settle. I've been reading the shipping reports every day. The number of tankers going through Hormuz is close to zero. It's been that way for months.

Local dealers are already flagging the jump. They lock in prices with wholesalers weeks in advance. When wholesale spikes 18% in a month, they can't eat it. They pass it on. There's no other way. The invoice in your driveway reflects what happened in Texas three weeks ago.

I keep coming back to who this hits. This isn't a city problem. Nobody in a townhouse heats with propane. It lands on the folks who live down long dirt driveways. The farm outside Bowling Green. The cabin in the Upper Peninsula. The double-wide in eastern Kentucky. People who can't just flip a switch to something else next week.

They've already dealt with grocery bills that keep climbing. They dealt with a rough spring. Now this. And they won't hear a word about it on the news. That story is about ships and war rooms. It's not about a widow in Iowa staring at a $1,200 invoice.

That's the number he'll remember. Not the ships in the Persian Gulf. Not the deal India signed in Washington. Just the four figures at the bottom of a piece of paper. He didn't do anything wrong. He didn't ask for any of this. But he's the one who pays.

The retiree in Missouri doesn't see any of this coming. He fills up once. Maybe twice. That's it for the whole winter. He'll open his invoice in October. He'll do the math in his head. Then he'll sit at the table for a long time before he calls his wife in from the porch.

More on this tomorrow.

— American Ledger