What's Ahead for U.S. Propane Marketers in Winter 2022-23?

https://bpnews.com/supply/whats-ahead-propane-marketers-winter-2022-23

by walterbell • 4 years ago

16 37 4 years ago

The article is paywalled. The fact that there is a paywalled news sight just for propane is interesting in itself though.

COGlory• 4 years ago

Not paywalled here, but I am visiting from a University IP.

ngc248• 4 years ago

Wasn't paywalled for me and I am visiting from the outside the US. Maybe they think you will pay for the article :)

korroziya3• 4 years ago

Wasn't paywalled for me but I'm running Brave with I don't know how many extentions to block scripts, ads and the like. What were you viewing it in?

someotherperson• 4 years ago

There are lots of ultra-specific news publications that require subscriptions. It's usually not very cheap either, but if they can gather 100 annual subscriptions at $2000 a piece it's enough to pay for the salary of at least one full-time journalist and one full-time editor, as well as any design overhead. It also allows them to maintain full independence.

People who usually subscribe to these things are researchers, industry-related businesses, other journalists or traders looking for an edge. The journalists writing the content are also researchers that have a direct, exclusive interest in the content so it turns out fairly high quality. Here[0] is another in a related industry: the Iraqi oil markets. With an annual subscription cost of $2301.

[0] https://www.iraqoilreport.com/subscriber/signup

LightRailTycoon• 4 years ago

In the grocery retail business, the trade press is free if you work for a retailer, and very expensive as a wholesaler. The subscription also comes with listing in a registry, moving the expense to the marketing budget.

dopeboy• 4 years ago

Trade magazines like these are actually good candidates for paywalls. Their small reader base is likely to get their employer to pay for it.

jwilk• 4 years ago

https://archive.today/dCJdI

VLM• 4 years ago

Propane market is a good analogy for solar and wind energy; lots of it, but hard to stockpile, and matching the producers to the consumers seems a very inefficient market with lots of economic and energy losses.

Electricity will be like propane, soon.

korroziya3• 4 years ago

I respectfully disagree. Propane (and natgas for that matter) while harder to store than coal or crude, is a hell of a lot easier to store than electricity from wind/solar. Propane tanks can be picked up, carried and used regardless of whether the sun shines or the wind blows, hence why renewables are "intermittent" and gas-fired electricity is not.

dragontamer3• 4 years ago

Another critical difference: we can store propane inside of steel and/or concrete containers. There are a few "steel and concrete" containers that can hold electricity (ex: Pumped Hydro), but the bulk of our technology is in Li-ion / rarer metals.

Steel and Concrete are two of the cheapest materials we have. Anything that uses it (rather than more expensive stuff) is strictly an advantage.

toast03• 4 years ago

Adding on, propane is pretty easy to stockpile as a consumer. Here's my anecdote:

I've got two 250 gallon propane tanks in my yard. One goes to my whole house generator which can go several days if needed; the other goes to the stove, water heater, and fireplace; this lasts several months, but not a whole year. After a few years experience, the best plan seems to be fill in september/october and again when prices come down in the spring. I'd probably try to get a bigger tank or a second tank for the house if we ever need to do meaningful work on the system, so we can fill once a year in the summer. Combining the two tanks I have now would probably be too expensive, and a dedicated supply for the generator seems good operationaly. The previous owner leased the tanks, and we kept going with that; it's probably better to own them as then you can get better fuel pricing.

mullingitover2• 4 years ago

Give it time. ESS is making huge iron-based flow batteries that fit in a 40 foot shipping container[1], have a 25 year operating life, and can be stacked up at a solar/wind site like lego blocks to turn the intermittent generation into steady supply. There's other stuff like this in development.

[1] https://essinc.com/energy-warehouse/

adolph• 4 years ago

Future scenario might be Wind/solar powered CO2, H2O conversion to methane or beyond to methanol for storage and bulk transfer.

Zach_the_Lizard• 4 years ago

It's pretty common in rural areas to have buried propane tanks that are refilled by trucks.

Depending on the climate and size of the tank, these might last all winter.

If you call that stockpiling, it's pretty easy, I'd say.

Much harder is the pretty capital intensive residential natural gas line.

colechristensen• 4 years ago

We would also sometimes buy our propane for future delivery months ahead of time.

xattt• 4 years ago

It's pretty common in rural areas to have buried propane tanks that are refilled by trucks.

Prince Edward Island is rural and has no natural gas infrastructure. It’s either fuel oil (diesel without road taxes applied) or propane for fossil fuel-based heating.

Residential propane tanks are above-ground barrels that are ~5 feet tall on concrete pads with trucks coming so often.

Many of the remote rural folks end up getting propane stoves in order to be able to cook when power is out.

plato_vengeance• 4 years ago

That's a good, clean-burning, article I tell you hwat

bradhe• 4 years ago

You can taste the food not the fuel.

fuzzfactor• 4 years ago

Well, when it comes to propane and propane axcessories . . .

I've been known to have an accessory or two.

Actually, one year in the lab I analyzed and certified all of the propane exported from the USA.

Single handedly.

No place else but Texas.

More recently I have seen some renewable propane produced in laboratory quantities but it's still going to take some time and good fortune for it to be available at the kind of scale where it can be economically purified like they do at regular oil companies, so people can fill up their barbecue tanks.

Now that was in Louisiana where they've got lots of gas too.

What's Ahead for U.S. Propane Marketers in Winter 2022-23?

Related Stories