All-time High Propane Prices to Start Dropping as Warmer Weather Takes Hold

• Logan Layden
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  Logan Layden is a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma. He is a native of McAlester, Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. Logan spent three years as a state capitol reporter and local host of All Things Considered for NPR member station KGOU in Norman and six years as a reporter with StateImpact from 2011 to 2017. Most recently, he was news director for McAlester Radio before returning to public radio in 2020.

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This has been a tough winter for the more than 400,000 Oklahomans who rely on propane for heat and fuel, with prices spiking to an average of more than $4 per gallon in late January.

Propane has never been so expensive, and there are several reasons why: A wetter than normal corn crop (propane is used to power corn dryers), the shutdown of a major propane pipeline for maintenance, and cold winter that has produced one giant storm after another.

But, as The Oklahoman‘s Jay R. Marks reports, that last reason for such pricey propane won’t be a problem much longer:

Oklahoma may have weathered the cold weather-fueled storm that caused propane prices to skyrocket.

Prices have dropped about 50 percent since late January at the storage hubs in Kansas and Texas that serve Oklahoma, said Richard Hess, executive director of the Oklahoma Propane Gas Association.

Hess said it will take some time for lower prices to trickle down to the retail level, as retailers replace their supplies.

Hess told the paper the prices are dropping “because dealers curtailed their purchasing while advising customers to buy less until prices stabilized.”

StateImpact is looking into the other reasons for the dramatic increase in propane prices, including why such an important pipeline was shut down for maintenance at the height of demand. We’ll have more on that next week.