Mont Belvieu Propane Spot Price: Today's Benchmark
Mont Belvieu, Texas is a small Chambers County town about 30 miles east of Houston that happens to host the largest natural gas liquids fractionation and storage complex in the United States. When a trader, a distributor, or an analyst quotes a propane wholesale price, the number they are almost always referencing is the Mont Belvieu spot price, also written as MB or LST (the LST is Lone Star Texas, the local pipeline tariff designation). The price for the most recent trading day from the U.S. Energy Information Administration daily series sits at the top of this page. The full historical archive runs back to 1991.
Why Mont Belvieu is the benchmark
Two physical facts make Mont Belvieu the price-discovery point for US propane. First, the storage: the salt-dome caverns around Mont Belvieu hold a large share of the country's NGL storage, run by several midstream operators. Second, the pipeline geography: natural gas liquids from the major producing basins flow to Mont Belvieu for fractionation, and product lines such as Dixie carry propane out of it toward the Southeast and East Coast. When a midstream contract is signed for propane delivery in Kansas, the formula is almost certainly Mont Belvieu plus a basis differential rather than a separately-discovered Kansas price.
The Energy Information Administration publishes a daily quote for Mont Belvieu non-LDH (Lone Star pipeline) propane at the EIA daily petroleum prices page. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis mirrors the same series as DPROPANEMBTX, which is what most financial dashboards pull from because the FRED API is more developer-friendly than the EIA endpoint. Both sources publish with a two- to three-business-day lag and are updated by 5pm Eastern most weekdays. The OPIS reference quote, which most retail distributors actually transact against, is built on top of the same physical Mont Belvieu basis but adds a subscription-only daily survey of dealer pricing.
Recent daily quotes
The ten most recent Mont Belvieu daily quotes from the EIA series, pulled into this site at build time. The wholesale benchmark generally moves a few cents day-to-day on inventory and weather updates, with much larger moves on EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report releases (Wednesdays at 10:30am Eastern) and on cold-snap forecasts.
| Date | Spot ($/gal) |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-07 | $0.939 |
| 2026-10-08 | $0.989 |
| 2026-10-09 | $1.005 |
| 2026-10-12 | $1.045 |
| 2026-10-13 | $1.038 |
| 2026-10-14 | $1.070 |
| 2026-10-15 | $1.068 |
| 2026-10-16 | $1.113 |
| 2026-10-19 | $1.130 |
| 2026-10-20 | $1.133 |
Source: EIA Mont Belvieu daily petroleum series. Pulled by the site fetch script on the most recent build (page built 2026-10-22).
From spot to retail
A homeowner does not transact at the Mont Belvieu price. Between the hub and the tank there are pipeline and terminal storage, the truck from the terminal to the distributor's bulk plant, the delivery to the house, the tank and its service, the dealer's overhead and the dealer's margin. Nobody publishes the cost of each of those steps. EIA does publish three prices along the way, which splits the gap into two measured legs:
- Mont Belvieu spot, $1.130 per gallon (EIA daily series, October 19, 2026).
- The US wholesale/resale rack price at a supplier's terminal, $1.242 for the week ending 19 October 2026 (EIA weekly, from OPIS terminal quotes): $0.11 above the hub.
- The US residential average, $2.689 the same week: $1.45 above the rack.
So most of the gap opens after the terminal, in the local business of hauling, storing, metering and servicing. Across the 38 states EIA surveys, residential prices that week ran from $1.651 in North Dakota to $4.928 in Florida, against the same hub price. The wholesale vs retail breakdown walks through the spread across the season.
Why the storage matters more than the production
A common confusion is that Mont Belvieu is the benchmark because Texas produces most of the country's propane. That is not quite right. Texas does produce a lot of propane (propane is the C3 fraction of natural gas liquids extracted at gas processing plants), but so do New Mexico, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Louisiana. What makes Mont Belvieu the benchmark is the storage. The salt-dome geology beneath Chambers County is well- suited to underground liquid storage, with caverns that are essentially indestructible at the volumes operators run them and highly cycleable (a cavern can be filled and emptied many times per year without geological issue). That storage capacity makes Mont Belvieu the buffer between US propane production and domestic-plus-export consumption, and the buffer is where the price clears.
The Conway, Kansas hub plays a similar role for the Midwest, with its own spot quote published by OPIS. The difference between the two hub prices moves with regional supply and demand, and it is not part of EIA's free daily spot series, which carries Mont Belvieu only. For residential retail purposes, however, Mont Belvieu is the reference even for Conway-served distributors because OPIS publishes both and most contracts index to Mont Belvieu by convention.
Mont Belvieu terminal capacity
The Mont Belvieu storage and fractionation complex is run by several midstream operators. Enterprise Products Partners is the largest operator with multiple fractionators (the company reports more than 1.1 million barrels per day of NGL fractionation capacity across the complex). Targa Resources operates the second largest set of fractionators (CBF I, II, and III plus the more recent Train 8 and 9 expansions, with reported combined capacity above 450,000 barrels per day). Phillips 66 (formerly DCP Midstream) and ONEOK each have additional fractionation and storage. Capacity at Mont Belvieu has roughly doubled since 2015 on the back of US shale NGL growth and waterborne LPG exports out of Gulf Coast terminals (Targa Galena Park, Enterprise Houston Ship Channel, Phillips 66 Freeport).
The bottleneck on a given day is rarely fractionation capacity. It is usually pipeline or marine-loading capacity downstream. When waterborne LPG export demand pulls hard (high Asian and European differentials), Mont Belvieu fills more slowly because barrels are drawn out to ship terminals before they can sit in storage. When domestic heating demand spikes, the opposite happens and storage draws down. The daily spot price reflects whichever pressure is dominant on a given trading day. Our page on US LPG exports walks through why this matters for residential retail.
OPIS, Argus, and EIA
Three reference prices are commonly cited for Mont Belvieu propane and they are not identical. OPIS (Oil Price Information Service, now part of Dow Jones) publishes a daily Mont Belvieu spot assessment based on dealer surveys plus reported trades. This is the most-cited number in physical propane trading and the rack basis most distributors quote against. Argus Media publishes a similar daily Mont Belvieu propane price, slightly different methodology, marginally different number on any given day. The EIA daily series referenced above is a third independent source, freely available, and the one this site uses because it is the only public reference. For deeper market work, paid OPIS or Argus access is the standard. For a homeowner deciding whether to fill a tank this week, the EIA series is sufficient.
How to use the Mont Belvieu price as a homeowner
A homeowner cannot transact at Mont Belvieu. What the price tells you is the direction of the wholesale market. If Mont Belvieu spot has rallied 20 cents per gallon over the last two weeks, your retail price quote will probably rise within four to six weeks as distributor contracts roll. If Mont Belvieu has dropped 20 cents, you can reasonably push back on a distributor quote that has not moved or call a competitor. The lag is real (dealers buy ahead and protect inventory cost), but the directional signal is reliable. For multi-month decisions about pre-buy contracts or summer fill timing, our summer buying page and seasonal-patterns page combine the Mont Belvieu signal with the longer-term residential retail history.
Related pages
- National wholesale propane price per gallon (residential supplier basis)
- Wholesale vs retail: the spread, broken down
- How US LPG exports move the propane price
- HD-5 propane specification and consumer-grade pricing
- Polar vortex 2014 spike: when storage drained too fast
- National residential propane price (this week)
FAQ
Is the Mont Belvieu price the same as the OPIS price?
They reference the same physical market but use different methodologies. OPIS surveys dealer transactions and is the paid-subscription industry reference. The EIA daily series quoted at the top of this page is a free public alternative covering the same Mont Belvieu hub. The two prices typically differ by a few tenths of a cent per gallon on a given day.
Why does my retail price not move when Mont Belvieu moves?
Distributor inventory cost and contract tier create a lag. Most dealers buy on monthly or quarterly contracts indexed to Mont Belvieu plus a basis. A daily spot move passes through to retail over four to eight weeks, not days. Sustained moves do transmit; transient daily volatility usually does not.
Where can I see the historical Mont Belvieu chart?
The EIA daily series goes back to October 1991. The St. Louis Fed mirrors it as DPROPANEMBTX with a built-in charting tool. Our propane price history page charts the residential and Mont Belvieu series side by side since 2014.
Is Conway, Kansas a benchmark too?
Yes, for the Mid-Continent and Midwest. OPIS publishes a Conway quote by subscription; EIA's free daily spot series carries Mont Belvieu only, which is why this site uses it.
What is the EIA series code for the Mont Belvieu daily spot price?
EER_EPLLPA_PF4_Y44MB_DPG for the Mont Belvieu (non-LDH) propane daily spot. The EIA v2 API treats it as part of the petroleum dataset.