winter propane contracts

[LPS]

That is what I thought too. 

[Gunner55]

When Dotch's customers get their big machines running & fire up the dryers, I doubt it will be going down much more IMO. A lot of seasonal people in this area will be pulling the plug for the season too & will want to get their tanks filled as well. Supply/demand rules & yes there are some taking advantage of the situation. That being said, my brother found gas for $3.89 in Squaw Lake today when he went for a ride on his bike.

[fishwidow]

Gas was $4.05 at the convenience store in Squaw Lake yday & we were told it's been like that for 2-3 weeks. Seen $4.08 in Cohasset today & $4.13 in GR.

GR is always higher. 15 or so years ago it would alternate between being higher and lower than gas in the metro. They even had a sort of renegade type of operation pop up when the Super One on the south side of town was a Cub that openly claimed to be fighting the trend of higher gas prices. In the last few years, I have avoided buying gas in GR because it’s always higher. Makes a trip to Hibbing or Nashwauk worth the extra miles for us.

[glenn57]

Same thing in deer river fishwidow!!

[Gunner55]

We normally get almost all our gas at M&H in GR as DR is usually higher. We like the $.05 off for going in to pay too, I guess it's $.010 if you pay with cash or by check, but we seldom do that. A full tank in the car, 2020 Escape, will last 2weeks for us & even then it's rarely more than 13 gallons. We use almost as much in the wheeler, boat, & mowers as that.

[Cooperman]

$3.89 in Park Rapids

[Bobberineyes]

We talking gas? I paid 3.54 coming thru Des Moines last Saturday , this mountain town in Colorado has ya by the balls, 5.29 we filled up with today.. 

[glenn57]

Hey if ya got it spend it!!!

Sorry Mikey made me.

[deadeye]

I am fortunate to be hooked to natural gas. The past 12 months gas bill totaled just under $900.  So far, the "pipe" has not run dry. 

[glenn57]

when we had the house built back in 1979 they didnt have a gas line coming up are street and if i remember right i would of had to pay for it from the current line up to my house so we have baseboard electric heat.

we are on a budget plan so it helps. 

[Gunner55]

The situation over in Germany won't let our energy prices go down very far until it is resolved either IMO. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/scholz-visit-nord-stream-1-gas-turbine-germany-2022-08-02/

[Gunner55]

$3.89 in Park Rapids

WCCO said it was $3.29 in Buffalo, Mn this AM.

[Dotch]

I am fortunate to be hooked to natural gas. The past 12 months gas bill totaled just under $900.  So far, the "pipe" has not run dry.

Hopefully that's a relatively new line and one the gas company plans on maintaining a while. I wouldn't put anything past the gas company in rural areas. When we first bought our place, we were hooked to natural gas via a farm tap. It was cheap and we never worried about running out. We had ~ an 1100' line that ran from the tap on the main line down in the field to our house. We'd noticed some peculiar sudden spikes in our consumption & bill late one summer. When we confronted them they said they just figured we might've put in a swimming pool or something.  Consumption came back down, we paid the bill, and in February they showed up, announced there was a gas leak by our house  (in our supply line from the farm tap) and promptly shutting our gas off, telling us too bad, so sad, you'll just have to switch your furnace over to LP. Have a nice life! Our furnace was probably over 30 years old and there was no "just switch it over to LP" to it. It took 3 days before we were able to get someone out there to install a new one. I could've switched back to natural gas again but I would've had to foot the bill for the new line to the house. Wouldn't have been cheap. Just the material alone was more than what I could afford at the time, not to mention the cost of trenching it in. In retrospect, probably a good thing I didn't do it.

The gas company is as I write this, in the process of abandoning the main line I was hooked into. It was an old line, put in back in the 1920's sometime if I remember reading my abstract correctly. They are rerouting & connecting other existing lines while making one helluva mess in several farmers growing crops. It has some of them really PO'ed as their buildings & corn dryers were hooked into the line they're abandoning. They've been trying to get the gas company to run another line for them but that ain't gonna happen even though the contract stipulates they probably should. The gas company has a lot of high powered attorneys on retainer. They operate like railroads I've concluded. They're so big and powerful, they do pretty much whatever the hell they want.

I did finally discover what happened to cause our gas leak. A couple years after our natural gas had been disconnected, I came across a pipe on the soil surface in what had once been part of the field. We added some additional acreage after our initial purchase for windbreak, pasture, wildlife habitat, etc. The galvanized pipe was bent at a crazy angle and I couldn't budge it. It puzzled me for a minute then the light bulb came on. Due to years of erosion, the supply line from the house to the farm tap worked its way closer to the surface and the guy running the ground most likely hooked it with his deep ripper in the fall. The pipe either developed a pinhole leak in it where it was crimped or where it was torn it loose at one of the threaded connections somewhere underground. I should probably yank it out someday. Dunno what I'll do with it but I sure know where I'd like to put it...     

[LPS]

That's what the corporate world thinks of us as individuals.  Absolutely nothing.  Unless there is a law suit and they have to redo it they won't.  What a hassle to those that depended on it.  Sure would think they would have a responsibility to restore service to them.  On their own dime too.

[deadeye]

Dotch,
That's quite a story. I never realized they can just abandon a line. I'm in the township but not too far from town so probably not an issue.
Back when I lived in Coon Rapids the gas company went through and replaced all the lines from the main pipe to the houses. They didn't have to dig up the lines but simply attached a line and pulled it through the original line. Fun to watch.