On January 10, the level of propane stock in the country was already at a 21 year low. Now we are experiencing more record breaking low temperatures. I keep hearing about our imminent energy independence, but these inconvenient stories keep popping up. I guess it’s nothing that a doubling of prices won’t cure. Of course, it’s generally poorer rural folk who rely on propane for heating and cooking. No biggie for Wall Street bankers and their mansions in Connecticut. Keep waiting for that plentiful shale oil and gas to save the day.
U.S. Midwestern states are scrambling to address a deepening shortage of the home-heating fuel propane just as another cold snap envelops the region, threatening to strain supplies that are already at historic lows.
Demand has been boosted by the combination of record freezing weather at the start of this year and a late, wet, record corn harvest last October and November, when large quantities of propane were used to dry out crops. Propane stocks have been drained and prices in the region are the highest since at least 1990.
To allow greater and quicker deliveries to rural homes and farms, several states, including Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, have suspended “hours of service” rules that limit the hours truck drivers can spend on the road, according to state notices collated by the National Propane Gas Association.
“There are no strategic stockpiles around the country like there are for crude oil,” said Roy Willis, president and chief executive officer of the Propane Education and Research Council. “It’s all in the private sector. Getting that replenished is a logistical challenge and that’s what we’re facing now.”
“What the industry is doing is literally working round the clock to move propane from where it is, in the large storage facility in Texas, using trains and trucks, pipelines and barges to where it is needed. That’s what’s happening now.”
Some 14 million households use the liquefied gas to heat homes, especially in upper Midwestern states such as Michigan and Ohio, where the shortages have had the most impact.
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