3 questions on oil, propane and coal

Robert O'Brien

help on the first two,the third is absolutely not

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Bob Gagnon plumbing and heating

3 questions on oil, propane and coal

First does anyone know how the current price of oil compares to propane? Second, is propane produced domestically, or does it come from overseas on those big tankers and maybe have the same price fluctuations that oil has? Third can I vent a coal boiler into the same chimney as an oil boiler? Thanks, Bob Gagnon

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Maine Doug_70

Some propane info

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_propane.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/3dreux

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Culled from a few sources:

Most propane is the result of refining natural gas, so it's price is more linked to natural gas than oil. A small portion does come from the refining of crude oil. As to why it costs significantly more than natural gas on a btu basis I can only speculate. Since natural gas is mainly methane, I assume this makes it relatively scarce but there is still very good demand. Liquification and transportion would certainly add to the cost. It also has less fuel value per pound, so this would likely add to transportation cost as well. With natural gas provided by public utilities in densly populated areas and much LP provided by independent suppliers in generally rural areas surely the economics of scale and increased cost of transportion come to play.

Like natural gas it is stored in underground salt caverns and transported (in gasseous state) via pipelines.

The vast majority (about 90%) of our propane is produced domestically. Since we still have fairly abundant natural gas, I can only assume that most of the natural gas is from domestic sources as well. Most of the remaining 10% of propane comes from Canada.


And NO, you cannot vent a coil boiler and and oil boiler into the same flue! Ever!

jp_2

natural gas not equal to nat gas

while you can separate propane from natural gas, you can not separate propane from the natural gas that your boiler uses!

natural gas seems to have two formulations;

one, naturally occurring with various other gases(propane, butane etc..) and two, the other gases removed from the natural occurring gas now comprising mainly of methane, which you can not derive propane from.