How an Ammonia Turnaround Reaches Your CO2 Contract
Producer prices for carbon dioxide are up 82% since 2019 against 54% for the industrial gas complex it sits inside, and the two lines moved in opposite directions this half. The gas nobody builds a plant to make is repricing faster than the ones they do.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a producer price index for industrial gas manufacturing. Inside that index, exactly one product carries its own published line.
Helium doesn't have one. Argon, oxygen and nitrogen don't have one either.
Carbon dioxide does.
And that line has spent seven years pulling away from the industry it belongs to.
Since January 2019 the CO2 index is up 82.2%. Industrial gas manufacturing as a whole is up 54.1% over the identical months (chart below).
The half where the two lines split
Through the first six months of 2026 they stopped merely diverging and went opposite ways.
The industrial gas index fell from 294.4 in January to 288.2 in June, down 2.1%. The carbon dioxide line inside it rose 1.4% over the same six prints, and 5.1% since December.
Most of that came in one month. April to May, the CO2 index moved from 790.5 to 807.6, a 2.2% step in a single print.
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