SEARSPORT, Maine — Though the conversion of home and commercial heating systems to natural gas has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, propane use in Maine also is up sharply.
Use of liquid propane, or LP gas, has more than doubled, said Ken Fletcher, director of the Governor’s Energy Office. In 2004, Maine used 52 million gallons of the fuel. Consumption grew to 129 million gallons in 2009.
“I would expect it’s much higher today,” Fletcher said. He estimated that residential use of the fuel has doubled while commercial conversions have tripled. Often, LP represents an ancillary fuel to oil or wood.
Between 10 percent and 15 percent of Maine homes and commercial buildings use propane, Fletcher estimated. Six percent of buildings are heated with natural gas, compared to 50 percent nationally.
The often-quoted figure of 80 percent of Maine homes relying on oil to heat has dropped, with Maine consuming less than 200 million gallons in 2010, down from 415 million gallons in 2004, he said.
Factors such as milder winters, as well as homeowners who add a pellet stove to their heating options, contribute to the lower oil use, he said.
Some LP heating plant conversions are being made in anticipation of natural gas being available, Fletcher said, since the switch from one fuel to the other is easy.
Currently, natural gas is available in Bangor, Portland, Lewiston and Auburn for residential use. The LePage administration is working to extend gas lines up the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers, and into places such as Rockland, Farmington and Bethel, Fletcher said.
A planned 23-million-gallon storage tank for liquid propane, which stills needs approval from the Searsport Planning Board, could play a role in Maine’s propane future, greatly increasing the state’s storage capacity. Yet at the same time, importation of propane by ship does not seem economically viable.
The common source of propane had been as a byproduct of oil refining, Fletcher said. As such, it could be transported by ship from newly developed oil fields in places such as North Africa. But more recently, propane is being taken from what’s known as “wet” natural gas, also known as shale gas. Much of this propane is found in North America.
As a result, price “is no longer tied to oil,” he said.
Propane averages $2.73 per gallon, which equates to $29.89 per million British thermal units, a measure made before the fuel is burned. Oil at $3.66 per gallon equates to $26.39 per million Btu.
But since propane in modern boilers and furnaces has an efficiency combustion rate of nearly 90 percent compared to 75 percent for older-style oil burners, propane can produce heat much more inexpensively, Fletcher explained.
Oil must be atomized into a fine spray before it can burn, while propane burns in its gas state.
Jamie Pye, president of the Maine Energy Marketers Association — not coincidentally, the former Maine Oil Dealers Association — agreed that propane use is up.
“It’s very popular. It’s growing,” he said.
Currently, propane comes to Maine by truck, ship and rail. The fuel is handled at rail terminals in Bangor, Biddeford, Lewiston and other places in Maine. The largest rail terminal for fuel is in Rochester, N.H., Pye said.
Railroads nationally have doubled the number of cars they own in recent years that can carry propane, a sign of the future, he believes.
“They’re calling them ‘rolling pipelines,’” Pye said.
“It would be nice to have that tank in Searsport,” Pye said, because the 23-million-gallon storage capacity would provide “a tremendous buffer of support for the entire system.” But given the higher cost of the oil-derived propane coming from refineries in Europe, transporting the fuel by ship is not cost-effective.
Of course, Pye noted, the fossil fuel market is volatile, so predicting more than a few years ahead is difficult.
Mainers reduced their OIL use by 50% in 5 years. That is pretty impressive
I reduced my heating bill by 60%-65% when I converted to natural gas. Bye bye propane and oil.
Lucky you. I live on a side street off a very busy street that now has natural gas available but mine – like so many other side streets – got passed by.
Me too. For what it’s worth, my suggestion is to get together with your neighbors, get solid agreements from all or most of them to make the switch, then call the gas company and tell them you have a package deal. That’s how it happened for us.
A very vocal minority on the coast are trying very hard to block the Searsport storage tank. The new little yellow sign says NO TANK, we are your real neighbors. What ever that’s supposed to mean. Many of us on the coast welcome the tank and the jobs it will bring. (I’m going to get blasted now)
People just like to protest and thats it
most homes have baseboard heat that only needs to heat water,why use heating oil to heat water when lp gas is cheaper and better?
LP is not cheaper and better. You get less BTUs per gallon and when you do the math, oil comes out on top.
Plus, you can service an oil boiler yourself and you own all the parts outright. LOL….try and do the same with an LP boiler!
Plus you can plumb a solar hot water unit directly into your boiler to save even more money.
Converted over to propane, cost, right around $3,000.00 to do, and now the cost of propane has gone up about thirty cents a gallon. If ever able to get natural gas, bet the price will go up before its delivered.
Its too bad they could not find a way to put natural gas into tanks for those of us outside the pipeline area to be able to use. I have been told that propane is a much higher refined version of natural gas, thus costing more, now about double the cost of natural gas. But a certain monopoly company in the Greater Bangor area still rips customers off with their excessive high prices for propane because they own your tank and you have to get the gas from them. And if you dont use enough, they charge a tank rental fee.
See my other comment about the sources of propane. It is usually a byproduct of crude refining (one of the first “cuts” to come of the distillation tower and a product of “cracking”) but it’s misleading to call it a more refined “version” of natural gas. The two have different properties and usually come from different sources. But yes, the extra processing and differing sources do raise the price (which should be compared on a BTU/weight basis).
Dear Inthestix,
You raise some very serious consumer issues on the increasing use of LPG in Maine and also on still unanswered questions about what the big tank in Searsport is really about and who will really benefit.
The entity, DCP Searsport LLC in whose name the tank will be built, owned and operated if approved by DEP seems to be a subsidiary of a direct dealer . It isn’t clear whether this will create a monopoly on supply and price or not.
Right now there is no legal structure in Maine to explore or answer any of these questions. LPG is not under the PUC. The fuel Boards oversight of LPG is only as a reporitng entity for Hazards..nothing else.
In anticipation of this Searsport Tank and expanded use of LPG in Maine, Maine’s legislature has effectively completely de regulated LPG so there is no oversight at all for price gouging or tank rental fees or any of the other emerging consumer issues including differential prices based on useage ( the less you use the more you pay).
All completely deregulated( following lobby by the national LPG industry) in recent legislative initiatives.
I have been lobbying Maine legislators to create an LPG Board..a fuel board specifically for LPG to deal with the safety, price, service and many other issues which will grow if we allow LPG use to grow in a completely de regulated environment.
Consumer BEWARE.
My advice to Mainers. Do not make any changes to your heating system towards LPG until Maine brings LPG under proper oversight and regulation via an LPG Board.
If you insulate your house properly you can heat with pellets or even a basic wood stove for a pittance of what a poorly insulated house heated with fossil fuels costs. And the beauty of cord wood or pellets is you can buy them produced in Maine. As opposed to over priced crap fossil fuels that have to be brought in by ship.
Cue the avalanche of “durrr I dun wanna clean da ash outta da stove!” whiners. Grow a pair and do your chores.
While we do enjoy our woodstove, it’s a heck of a lot of work and I can see how it will become a problem as we (hopefully) get old and our pieces parts probably won’t be able to perform even simple tasks of shoveling coals, let alone chopping, stacking, and lugging wood. I suspect a good deal of Mainers are currently experiencing this very issue :(
Also, what do you do when you leave your house for any length of time? New meaning to housebound.
Good point! We haven’t left the house for more than 8 hours at a time in 11+ years now…”woods queer” our friend calls it. We have more to tend to than just a fire though…critters tend to be as much if not more “grounding” than keeping the fire going as they area 24/365.
:-D
I had put in a combination wood/oil boiler in my house when it was built. I haven’t used a tank of fuel in three years, the oil is strictly for back up.
No one can argue the work involved in handling cordwood, keeps me out of the gym right now though :)
just wait till you shoulders are destroyed in your sixties :-)
My shoulders already are half gone, :) I’ve just come up with ways to make it easier with tractors, woodspliters and the like. I enjoy doing the work so I’ll keep doing it as long as I’m able. When I cant I plan on converting to wood pellets delivered in bulk, not much work in that one except cleaning the boiler every so often.
Don’t forget to put additive in the tank every so often so the oil doesn’t turn to sludge.
Pellet stoves and furnaces are self-feeding.
I sell my wood to folks like you so I can buy oil. The premium on oil is worth not having to deal with the wear and tear on the body. And it’s nice to just go over and turn up the thermostat when I want heat, as oppoosed to work involved with maintaining the woodstove. The woodstove is there, however, just in case oil ever exceeds 6 or 7 bucks a gallon. Until then, definitely worth it!
Some homes just aren’t going to work with a single stove as the primary heat source – square footage and layout (open concept vs traditional) obviously is a big factor, though even so, they can be a great supplement and help lower overall costs. Diversification is good.
You also need a strong back to life those heavy sacks the pellets come in. For some of us, it’s not a practical choice at all.
You can now get Northeast brand pellets in 25lb bags FYI, you can also get bulk delivery in most places now.
Propane is not a natural gas derivitive as most people think. It’s comes from crude oil. That is why it is so darn expensive. Depending where you live propane can cost as much as $4 a gallon….about the same as fuel oil. Natural gas, on the other hand, is much cheaper if you are lucky enought to have it in your neighborhood. I have a heat pump…when the temperature drops to 35 degrees the system goes to propane heat. I live in the south where electricity is cheap and propane runs about $3 a gallon. If I had to do it over again I would go with a heat pump and heating strips, or move into a neighborhood where they have natural gas. A petroleum geology professor at one of the Universities in TX was telling me recently that there is are so many natural gas deposits in the US that you could run everything on it, including your car. Some fleet vehicles run on natural gas, and perhaps some day we’ll be using it in our SUVs.
Propane comes from a number of sources, including “wet” natural gas as cited in the article as well as a by product from crude production and crude refining. Current production figures should be available. It is not only a fuel but a chemical feedstock, especially for the manufacture of propylene for polypropylene manufacture. However, the price usually tracks the fuel price even if used for petrochemicals.
I don’t know where you are buying your propane but my last delivery was at $1.38 a gallon.
That’s about what I paid 10 years ago!
Rolling pipelines? Not with our dilapidated rail system in Maine.
If they ship it now we will get it by next winter.
In Maine we all heat our homes about seven months out of the year, give or take a few weeks. I built a new home and heat my home and water with Propane Gas. For my lifestyle it is the best. I wish I could get Natural Gas. Oil and Kerosine require a large investment in installation and maintainence, to say nothing about fuel cost. Bulk wood and pellets are ok if you have a chainsaw, a woodlot, vast amounts of youthful energy, and want to stay home with your equipment all winter. I have heated with bulk wood and pellets and, lets face it folks, playing nursemaid to your wood stove sucks. Heat with gas and take a mid-winter vacation.
Water jacket on the wood stove in the winter heats the hot water, summertime comes, the sun heats the water, stored in a regular insulated water tank.
Low voltage cable running under the flooring is run by the sun when the stove is out when we go away. If the ceilings weren’t so low we would have set it up so there were pipes under the floors with antifreeze in them and that would have heated the whole house and the hot water with sun or wood.
No oil, gas, electric bill for heat, minimal work to stack and move wood in the winter, and the peace of mind of knowing that if the pipeline, oil, electric ever goes down, we’ll still be sitting in a cozy warm house, all with help from the tax breaks we got for buying two solar panels, low v cable, good windows and doors, building our own solar collector for the hot water, insulating the cracks and being able to bank the electricity that goes out to the grid when we don’t use it. Total outlay? Less than the cost of a new oil or gas burner.
The tank will eventually be used to export natural gas, not import it. they are planning pipelines to deliver the natural gas they get by fraking in NY and Ontario. They are also looking for a port to ship wood pellets and the manufactured coal for the Maine woods to Europe. The port and tank in Searsport is the first step in turning the Northeast into an energy wastland. All at a time when we must start reducing the use of fossil fuel to reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
The highly corrupted, bought and paid for, government sponsored university system in this nation is indoctrinating the minds of today’s youth into an intellectual wasteland.
Sounds good to me. Different forms of energy and jobs in the mid coast area. “Northeast into an energy wastland” Yep….just one tank away. If we as a species are going to continue to have offspring we will need all the different forms or energy we can get and jobs to support ourselves. As nice as it would be..we can’t go back to the 1950s. We need to carve small sections of the state to support our existence.
If we as a species wish to continue to exist we must reduce our use of fossil fuels. If we don’t our earth will soon become uninhabitable. Put that on your grandchildren grampy !
Which we are doing. But it’s not going to happen next week. In the mean time we need to develop and continue with what we have.
No, it won’t happen next week, but it will happen in their lifetimes. We stand a better chance if we leave the oil, gas, coal, in the ground and concentrate on renewables. Get educated about the effects of increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
Convert to a waste oil burner.
could alwasy burn roadfuel…
Dead River installed a propane boiler and a rinnai hot water system in July. I had it piped for Natural Gas incase Bangor Gas expands out where I live in Bangor. Bangor Gas told me they didn’t plan on coming out this far Ohio street.
If you are not going to go alternative,propane and nat gas are the way to go. Just say No Mas to M.E. oil !
Sounds good to me. Less people on oil only means the commodity will be cheaper for me!
Better yet,get off The Collapsing grid !
Newer oil boilers are more efficient and can get up to 85% – 86% efficiency, and 1 gallon of #2 fuel = 140,000 Btu’s, while 1 gallon of Propane = 92,000 Btu’s. So even though you may be paying less for gallon on Propane it is less heat you actually receive per gallon than for the gallon of oil. I hope Augusta gets with the program ASAP and gets Natural Gas to anyone who wants it. It should be the leading story and real moral issue for all Maine people!
Your facts are not what those who profit from LP or Natural gas want to hear. I do believe you are essentially correct, LP and oil btu’s do not compute the same. it is buyer beware when making choices for home heating. Also to consider, what happens to the price when enough homes and businesses are converted to gas. Keep in mind, oil was inexpensive until many took out the old wood furnace and installed oil furnaces. I still keep the wood heater going with oil as a back up. Yes it is a lot of work, but it helps keep me in better shape than sitting around enjoying the oil heat and letting my arteries harden faster. I’m in my seventies and don’t plan to do any different any time soon.
So Propane at $29.89 per Million BTU divided by 90% equals $33.21 per MBTU Delivered. Oil at $26.39 per MBTU divided by 85% efficiency ( a more fair number for comparing new units to new units, rather than new propane to old oil) is $31.04 per MBTU Delivered. Oil is 6.5% less. Last time I checked, oil furnaces and boilers were cheaper than LP units as well.
LP boilers are a shame and I laugh whenever I hear people talking about how much money they save over oil….bogus argument
Mainers should be converting all public buildings to wood boilers. Trees are a renewable resource, propane is not. We send hundreds of millions out of the state every year to stay warm. Think of all the jobs that could be created by converting to wood. Wait, this would create thousands of jobs that pay a living wage, save a boat load of tax dollars, and make us a lot more self reliant in our energy needs. Augusta will never go for it.
Shameless lobbying for your corporate sponsors, BDN.
I don’t know where propane costs $2.73/gallon. In my part of Maine it’s way past $3. I ration it out sparingly. It still costs much more than I’m comfortable paying.
Literally thousands of people around Penobscot Bay are understandably up in arms about a proposal for a monster cryogenic tank and terminal for liquefied propane in Searsport that is not only absolutely unnecessary but threatens to cause significant harm to the region. A major grassroots political campaign to block the terminal has been in full swing for more than a year, The foremost hazards assessment expert in the world, Richard Clarke, top security adviser to three U.S. presidents and the man who famously warned us before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — he’s conducting an investigation and review. Meanwhile, not a week goes by without anti-tank activists in some way rallying support and confronting their town officials while their lawyers pursue actions across a wide range of fronts before municipal boards, state and federal agencies and in the Maine and federal courts.
What is the Bangor Daily News’ response? A couple of pathetic puff pieces like this one in which Waldo Country bureau chief Tom Groening actually manages to outdo Hank Hill as a sycophant for the propane industry. These alleged usage figures are absolutely bogus but who would expect the BDN’s ace reporter to do anything so basic as to check them out. Ken Fletcher is a notorious anti-environmentalist and corporate business apologist who never heard of an industrial project he didn’t adore, but for Mr.Groening he’s the authority figure to play stenographer to. What does it matter that the most recent (bogus) figures are at least three years old.
I recall that Mr.Groening was at one time some upset at the prospect of a gravel extraction operation in his own neighborhood in Belfast. It didn’t matter that he had this personal concern and at the same time he was editor of the Republican Journal. There was no conflict for him and he used the RJ as his bully pulpit to fearlessly campaign against that project. Perhaps if DCP Midstream were to decide instead to build its 14-story behemoth of a tank with its 22.7-million-gallon ocean of boiling liquefied propane smack in the middle of Mr. Groening’s neighborhood — perhaps then he might be willing to consider this outrage a little more seriously.