Wholesale Propane Price Per Gallon (US, 2026)

There are three wholesale propane prices in regular use, and they are not the same. This page covers all three, with the current week reading for each.

Three wholesale prices, one supply chain

The first wholesale price is the Mont Belvieu spot price, covered in detail on the Mont Belvieu page. That is the daily price at which physical propane changes hands in underground salt-dome storage in Chambers County, Texas. It is the benchmark every other propane price ultimately references. As of the most recent EIA quote on this site, Mont Belvieu was around $0.835 per gallon.

The second wholesale price is the rack price. Rack pricing is the spot wholesale price at a regional terminal where a propane retailer can load a tanker truck. Each major terminal (Conway KS, Hattiesburg MS, Hannibal MO, Selkirk NY, dozens more) posts a daily rack price, typically Mont Belvieu plus a basis differential covering pipeline transport and local terminal economics. Rack differentials run 3 to 8 cents per gallon for Mid-Continent and Gulf Coast terminals, 10 to 30 cents for Atlantic and New England terminals, and can blow out during peak winter demand. OPIS and Argus publish daily rack postings; the EIA does not publish rack data publicly, which is the reason most rack analysis lives behind a paywall.

The third wholesale price is the residential-supplier wholesale price published weekly by the EIA as series W_EPLLPA_PWR_NUS_DPG. This is a national average of what residential propane distributors actually pay for their wholesale supply, surveyed alongside the residential price each Wednesday during the heating season. As of the week ending 30 March 2026, this figure was $1.041 per gallon. The difference between the residential-supplier wholesale price and Mont Belvieu spot is the rack-plus-transport layer; the difference between the residential-supplier wholesale price and the residential retail price is the dealer margin plus delivery plus tank service.

This season at the residential-supplier wholesale level

The chart below tracks the EIA residential-supplier wholesale price weekly across the full 2025-2026 heating season. The familiar pattern is visible. The series climbs through October and November as inventory draws begin, accelerates in December as cold-snap demand surges, peaks in mid-January at the height of residential heating draw, and eases through February and March as the inventory pressure releases.

Why three wholesale numbers and not one

The propane supply chain is layered, and each layer is a separate economic transaction with a separate price. The spot, rack, and residential-supplier prices each measure a different point in that chain. Spot measures the inventory clearing price at the benchmark hub. Rack measures the cost to load a tanker truck at a regional terminal, with the pipeline and terminal economics baked in. Residential-supplier wholesale measures what a retail distributor actually pays for the propane they sell to homes, across all their contracts and spot purchases combined.

For a retailer running a 6,000-gallon-per-week residential delivery operation, the three numbers all matter but in different ways. The spot price tells the retailer where the market is heading and informs whether to fill summer storage aggressively or hold off. The rack price is the actual purchase price for next week's truckloads. The residential-supplier wholesale number is what shows up in industry benchmarks and what analysts use to gauge whether dealer margins are widening or compressing across the country.

Wholesale-to-retail spread, by region

The spread between residential-supplier wholesale (national average) and residential retail (national average) for the most recent week sits at $1.63 per gallon. That figure represents the all-in cost of converting a wholesale truckload purchase into a delivered residential fill, plus dealer profit. The components are:

• Bobtail truck delivery: 8 to 18 cents per gallon depending on route density. Rural Vermont delivery spreads the cost over fewer stops per day than suburban Ohio.
• Tank lease amortisation: 5 to 12 cents per gallon. A 500-gallon leased tank costs the dealer roughly $1,800-$2,400 installed and is amortised across customer usage over 15 to 20 years.
• Regulator service and leak checks: 1 to 3 cents per gallon. NFPA 58 requires periodic inspection.
• Emergency call coverage: 2 to 5 cents per gallon. Most residential dealers run 24-hour emergency service.
• Insurance, regulatory compliance, weights and measures: 2 to 4 cents per gallon. Including the NPGA assessment where applicable.
• Dealer net margin: 20 to 70 cents per gallon depending on customer class and competition. Higher for light-usage residential customers (300 gallons per year), lower for large-volume commercial and agricultural accounts.

Add those layers to the $1.041 residential-supplier wholesale price and you arrive in the band the EIA reports for residential retail. Our wholesale vs retail breakdown walks through the full reconciliation.

Why the wholesale price moves day to day

The largest drivers of week-to-week wholesale propane price movement are inventory and weather. EIA publishes the Weekly Petroleum Status Report every Wednesday at 10:30am Eastern, which includes US propane inventory levels (in million barrels) broken out by PADD region. A larger-than-expected inventory draw (say 5 million barrels in a single week) signals tight supply and tends to lift Mont Belvieu spot by several cents per gallon within the trading day. A larger-than-expected build does the reverse.

The second driver is weather forecast revision. Heating degree day forecasts from the National Weather Service drive expected demand. When the 6-10 day outlook revises colder, traders bid up forward contracts and the spot price follows. Cold-snap forecasts that affect the Midwest (PADD 2, the largest residential propane region) move the market more than cold-snap forecasts affecting California (PADD 5, low propane usage). The third driver is crude oil, since propane competes with naphtha as a steam-cracker feedstock for ethylene production; large moves in WTI or Brent translate into smaller but real moves in propane via the petrochemical demand channel.

Finally, export demand. US LPG exports (propane plus butane) are published monthly by EIA. When the FOB Houston-to-Japan or FOB Houston-to-Northwest-Europe price differential widens, more barrels move to ship terminals and less to domestic storage, which tightens the domestic Mont Belvieu market. The LPG exports page covers this channel in detail.

Rack pricing: what dealers actually pay

For homeowners curious what their distributor pays at the terminal, the publicly available signal is approximately Mont Belvieu spot plus 5 to 10 cents per gallon for a Mid-Continent rack, plus 15 to 30 cents per gallon for an East Coast rack during winter. Add to that a typical 0.5 to 2 cents per gallon for the propane gas association assessment where applicable. A bobtail driver loading at a Hattiesburg rack in late January might be paying the dealer's account roughly $1.00 to $1.30 per gallon all-in, against the Mont Belvieu reference around $0.835. The dealer then delivers and bills retail in the $2.30 to $3.50 range depending on customer class and region.

Wholesale price history and what to read into the current level

Looking at the residential-supplier wholesale series in context, the season opening level around $0.82 per gallon was modestly below the 2014-2024 October average. The peak around $1.10 in mid-January was within the normal cold-snap range and well below the polar vortex 2014 January peak (which briefly touched $2.50 at the residential wholesale level). The most recent reading of $1.041 per gallon suggests a normalised market heading into the spring shoulder season. Unless an unusual summer demand event materialises (large export draw, hurricane disruption to Gulf Coast fractionation), the wholesale series typically eases through April and May before bottoming in August or September.

Related

• Mont Belvieu daily spot price (the benchmark)
• Wholesale vs retail: the spread, broken down
• Commercial vs residential propane price per gallon
• Agricultural propane price per gallon
• How US LPG exports move the propane price
• Seasonal patterns

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