The Gulf Coast Has Never Held This Much Propane
Wednesday's EIA report put Gulf Coast propane and propylene stocks at 66.9 million barrels, three weeks after the district printed the highest weekly figure in a series that starts in 2004. The national total is not a record. Almost the whole surplus is sitting in the one district where the dehydrogenation units take suction.
EIA has published this series every Wednesday since April 2004. On July 24 it printed a number the Gulf Coast had never reached: 66.971 million barrels of propane and propylene sitting in PAD District 3.
Wednesday's report, covering the week ending August 7, came in at 66.943 million. Second highest week in twenty-two years, twenty-eight thousand barrels off the record it set three weeks earlier.
The national number is not a record. At 104.974 million barrels the country is still below the 106.094 million it held on the last week of October 2025, and it moved up only 1.9 million on the week.
So the surplus has an address.
Where the Barrel Actually Is
Take each district's stocks this week against the average for the same reporting week in 2021 through 2025, and three of the four groupings look ordinary (chart below).
East Coast +7.8%. Rockies and West Coast +5.0%. Midwest +11.9%.
The Gulf Coast is +47.5%.
That is the desk's own five-year average, computed off EIA's published weekly series rather than taken from anyone's band. The share tells the same story more plainly: PADD 3 holds 63.8% of national propane and propylene stocks right now against 56.8% on the five-year normal, and the district is up 25.6% against the same week last year while the country is up 18.5%.
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