PADD 2 (Midwest) propane stocks

The Midwest carries a demand pattern the coasts do not share: propane fires grain dryers across the Corn Belt every fall, so stocks here can tighten weeks before winter heating demand even arrives, especially after a wet harvest. Supply reaches the region by pipeline from the Gulf Coast and from gas processing plants closer to home, with a secondary storage and trading hub around Conway, Kansas that functions as a smaller inland counterpart to Mont Belvieu. Stocks build through the same spring-to-summer window as the rest of the country, then draw down first for the harvest and again through the heating season proper. The five-year band is the reference point for whether the Midwest is carrying its usual cushion into an autumn that starts drawing on it earlier than the calendar alone would suggest.

For winter propane prices this is the inventory line the market watches hardest. It covers the largest block of consuming demand in the country, and the pipelines that refill it run a long way north from the Gulf Coast. EIA counts propane and propylene in primary storage, in thousand barrels, published in the Weekly Petroleum Status Report each Wednesday for the week ended the prior Friday, with holiday weeks pushed to Thursday. The winter of 2013-14 is the reference case for what a thin Midwest reading can do: a wet corn harvest sent unusual volumes into grain dryers through the fall, severe cold followed in January, spot propane at the Conway hub in Kansas ran far above the Gulf Coast benchmark, and dealers across the region rationed deliveries.