What are PADDs?

A PADD is a Petroleum Administration for Defense District, one of five regions the US government has grouped states into for petroleum data since World War II. There are five of them: PADD 1 is the East Coast, PADD 2 the Midwest, PADD 3 the Gulf Coast, PADD 4 the Rocky Mountains and PADD 5 the West Coast. EIA reports propane prices, stocks and supply by these districts, so knowing the map is how you read a regional propane number.

Where the districts came from

The name is a wartime relic. During World War II the Petroleum Administration for War, created by executive order in 1942, used these five districts to ration gasoline. The agency was abolished in 1946, but the Defense Production Act of 1950 created a successor, the Petroleum Administration for Defense, and the district lines stuck. EIA has used them ever since to group the states for petroleum supply data. The districts were never redrawn for markets, which is part of why they are broad and occasionally awkward.

The five districts, and PADD 1's three parts

PADD 1, the East Coast, is large enough that EIA splits it into three sub-districts: 1A New England, 1B the Central Atlantic and 1C the Lower Atlantic. That split matters for propane because New England is a distinct, high-priced heating market. In the last survey week of the 2025-26 season, New England residential propane read $3.766 a gallon while the national average was $2.674, a gap of more than a dollar, and the sub-district numbers are what make that visible. PADD 2 is the Midwest, PADD 3 the Gulf Coast, PADD 4 the Rocky Mountains and PADD 5 the West Coast. One quirk to know: the weekly propane stocks report combines PADD 4 and PADD 5 into a single Rockies-and-West-Coast number, so you will see a PADD 4-5 line in the inventory data. The price survey has its own coverage limit: 38 states report a weekly residential propane price, and the states outside it, mostly on the Pacific coast, roll up only into their district figures.

Why PADDs matter for propane

The districts are not equal in the propane market. PADD 3, the Gulf Coast, is the production and export engine: about half of US propane production is there, along with roughly 70 percent of national storage capacity and the export terminals, per EIA. PADD 2, the Midwest, is Conway country, home to the Midwest trading hub and to the fall crop-drying demand that fires grain dryers after harvest. PADD 1, the East Coast, is a winter draw region that leans on propane moved in from elsewhere and reads the highest retail prices. The Midwest, meanwhile, is the region with the greatest propane demand for home heating; EIA counts about a third of the country's 6.6 million propane-heating households there.

Worked example: why the same fuel prices differently by district

PADD-level prices diverge, sometimes sharply, and the tables here show it. As of the last survey week ending March 30, 2026, the residential propane price ran about $3.60 a gallon in PADD 1, the East Coast, $2.93 in PADD 3, the Gulf Coast, and $2.18 in PADD 2, the Midwest.

Read those three tables together and the surprise is that the Gulf Coast, where most of the propane is produced and stored, is not the cheapest place to buy it at retail. The Midwest is. Retail price is set by local delivery economics, market structure and heating demand, not by proximity to a production hub, which is exactly why the district a customer sits in tells you more about their bill than the national average does. These are last-winter readings, dated to the March survey and paused until October.

The Fill Line reports each district's prices, stocks and supply as EIA publishes them. It explains what the districts are and how they differ; it does not forecast where any district's price goes next.

The Fill Line is a free weekly read of the public propane numbers. Stocks, the Mont Belvieu spot and the weekly supply balance update year round; the state price survey resumes in October. One email a week on what moved.