Mont Belvieu, Texas

Mont Belvieu, Texas is a tiny little town in Southeast Texas about 25 miles East of Houston. I don't know if anybody actually lives there anymore. There was an explosion back in 1985 and some folks got relocated two miles down the road. It doesn't look like anyone lives there:


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Why do we care about Mont Belvieu, Texas, anyway? I mean, I lived in Houston for a couple of years and I never heard of it. Why are we talking about it now?

Propane, that's why. I am convinced that all the money we send to Saudi Arabia in exchange for oil is at the root of many of the world's problems. I've got a pickup truck with a honking big V-8 engine that sucks gas like a pig (if pigs sucked gas). So I got to thinking the other day that I could convert it to use natural gas, cut my fuel bill and boycott Saudi Arabia all in one fell swoop.

Well, you can convert a gasoline automobile to use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), but it's a tad expensive. Thousands of dollars. You might be able to get away with $2,000 if you do the work yourself, but it will cost considerable more to have it done. The tank is one obstacle. One price I saw was $1,000 for the tank alone. Then you need a compressor to pump the gas into the tank ... it gets complicated.

So I'm talking to Jack and it comes out that while propane is also a good fuel and a gas, it can be compressed to a liquid, and liquids are just naturally more compact than a gas, no matter how high the pressure. So propane might be a better fuel.

So now I'm looking up propane and there is all this talk about it and how it's used and what it's like, but nowhere am I seeing how much is actually produced and/or consumed in the US, or anywhere for that matter.

But while I am looking around for this info, Mont Belvieu, Texas pops up at the head of the list of items Google found. What has Mont Belvieu got to do with price of beans in Brazil, or in this case, the price of propane? Turns out quite a bit. A mile underground they have the largest propane storage tank in North America: 43 million barrels. It's a salt cavern where oil was discovered way back in 1930. After they pumped all the oil out, it became a perfect place to store propane, and that's what they have been using it for, at least since 1955.

How much is 43 million barrels? Enough to fill five buildings the size of the Sears, er, Willis Tower.

So if you are dealing in propane, the spot price of propane in Mont Belvieu, Texas, is one of those bits of information you would keep track of.

Update November 2016 replaced dead government link.