Spot
Near normalMont Belvieu propane spot price
Daily FOB spot at Mont Belvieu, TX, the US wholesale propane benchmark
Data through Sep 1, 2026 · source last checked Sep 2, 2026 · page revised Sep 2, 2026
Cite
- Spot
About this data
- Source
- EIA daily spot price
- Series
- Mont Belvieu propane spot price
- Basis
- FOB Mont Belvieu
- Geography
- Mont Belvieu, TX
- Unit
- $/gal
- Calculation
- Daily (business days)
- Last observation
- Sep 1, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now $0.736/gal, 1.7% below the 5-yr median.
Mont Belvieu propane spot rose to $0.736/gal on 2026-09-01, up 7.4% for the week. Year over year the price is up 10.2%, though it remains 1.7% below the 5-year median.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | $0.736/gal | $0.685/gal | +7.4% |
| vs 4 weeks ago | $0.736/gal | $0.655/gal | +12.4% |
| Year over year | $0.736/gal | $0.668/gal | +10.2% |
| vs 5-yr median | $0.736/gal | $0.749/gal | -1.7% |
Previous weeks
Week of Aug 25, 2026
Mont Belvieu spot fell 4 cents to $0.685/gal on Aug 25, sitting 11.6% below the 5-year median.
An earlier week
Mont Belvieu spot price rose to $0.723/gal on August 18, up 5.0 cents on the week. The level sits 4.2% below the 5-year median.
Week of Aug 19, 2026
Mont Belvieu propane fell 3.4% on the week to $0.655/gal per EIA's daily spot series, now 10% below the 5-year median. US propane exports ran at 1.921 million b/d, 30% above the 5-year median, down 9% on the week. EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook projects US propane/propylene inventories of 98.5 million barrels at end of December 2026.
What Mont Belvieu is, and why US propane prices key off it
Mont Belvieu is a small town in Chambers County, Texas, east of Houston, sitting on top of a salt dome. The caverns washed out of that dome hold the largest concentration of natural gas liquids storage in the world, and the fractionators, pipelines and export docks built around them make the place the physical center of the US propane market. Propane arriving from gas processing plants across Texas, the Midcontinent and the Rockies is separated out, stored there, and then either shipped by pipeline to domestic markets or loaded onto ships at Gulf Coast terminals for buyers overseas.
Because so much physical volume changes hands there, Mont Belvieu is the price the rest of the market quotes against: this FOB spot number is the US wholesale propane benchmark, the reference price every regional rack and delivered price is ultimately a markup over. Supply contracts around the country are written at a differential to it, futures and options settle against it, and the inland hub at Conway, Kansas is usually quoted as a spread to it rather than on its own terms. The number on this page is EIA's daily spot price in dollars per gallon, free on board at the hub, which means it is the value of barrels sitting at Mont Belvieu and carries none of the pipeline tariff, terminal fee, trucking or dealer service standing between the hub and a residential tank.
Traders split the hub into grades. TET propane moves on the Enterprise TE Products system and is the more widely quoted of the two; non-TET, often quoted as LST for the Lone Star system, trades separately, and the two can carry a spread of a few cents on the same day. EIA publishes one Mont Belvieu propane series rather than both, so treat this as a hub-level benchmark rather than a specific contract grade.
Retail is a different market on a different clock. The residential price EIA surveys through the winter includes everything the hub number leaves out, and it moves slowly: dealers buy on contract, pre-buy ahead of the season and carry inventory, so a hub move takes weeks to reach a delivery ticket and rarely arrives in full. The distance between the two is tracked on US residential price vs Mont Belvieu. Two forces move this price alongside winter weather: the pace of US export loadings on the Gulf Coast, on US propane exports, and the inventory behind them, on Gulf Coast propane stocks.