Hawaii propane prices: $4.15 a gallon

No, and we will not pretend otherwise. Hawaii publishes no single consumer-facing per-dealer LP-gas registry we can republish the way Wisconsin, Texas or Florida do, so this page carries no full state dealer directory and no invented ratings. Hawaii regulates the trade in pieces: the county fire departments (Honolulu, Hawaii County, Maui, Kauai) issue LP-gas storage and handling permits and enforce NFPA 58, the LP-Gas Code, adopted through the State Fire Council, while the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA) handles commercial registration and its Division of Consumer Advocacy oversees the regulated Hawaii Gas utility rather than bottled-propane retailers. None of them publishes a browsable list of retail propane sellers. What we offer instead is a hand-checked, island-by-island list of real operators with links to their own public review pages, plus the ZIP finder at /propane-prices-near-me/ and the supplier directory at /supplier/ to match a company to your address.

Because there is no statewide consumer license lookup for LP-gas retailers, verification in Hawaii is done at the county level. Any operator that stores, transports and dispenses propane must hold LP-gas permits from the fire department in the county where it operates, issued under NFPA 58 as adopted by the Hawaii State Fire Council. On Hawaii Island, for example, a permit is required for LPG tank installations of 125 gallons or more. Ask a supplier which county permits it holds and confirm with that county fire department's permit office if an installation looks non-compliant. Two further signals: membership in the Pacific Propane Gas Association (the regional trade body covering Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon and Washington) or the National Propane Gas Association is a positive marker, not a license, and the DCCA business registration search confirms a company is a registered Hawaii entity. Never accept a fill from an operator that cannot name its county permits.

H-HEAP, the Hawaii Home Energy Assistance Program (formerly LIHEAP), is the state's federally funded energy-assistance scheme, administered by the Department of Human Services, Benefit, Employment and Support Services Division (BESSD) and delivered through a Community Action agency on each island rather than a central state office. Core income eligibility is a household at or below 150% of the Federal Poverty Level, and Hawaii uses its own higher poverty guideline, so for the 2026 program year that is roughly $41,941 a year for a single-person household and about $80,656 for a household of four. Households already receiving SNAP, SSI or TANF are generally categorically eligible. The program has two benefits: Energy Crisis Intervention (ECI), taken year-round for a household facing disconnection with a shutoff notice, and Energy Credit (EC), a one-time bill credit with a short application window that runs in June each year. Because Hawaii has effectively no winter heating load, the program weights toward electricity and water-heating costs rather than space heat. Apply through your island's Community Action agency: Honolulu Community Action Program on Oahu, Maui Economic Opportunity for Maui, Molokai and Lanai, Kauai Economic Opportunity on Kauai, and the Hawaii County Economic Opportunity Council on the Big Island.

They are two different products sold under the same utility brand, and the distinction decides which price model applies to you. Hawaii Gas manufactures synthetic natural gas (SNG) at its plant at Campbell Industrial Park on Oahu by reforming naphtha, an oil-refining by-product, into a methane-rich gas, and pipes it through roughly 1,000 miles of underground main to about 35,000 utility customers between Kapolei and Hawaii Kai. SNG is billed as a regulated utility tariff set by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, not by the gallon. Separately, Hawaii Gas and independent dealers deliver liquefied petroleum gas (LPG, propane) in 20-lb cylinders, 100 to 120 gallon residential tanks and larger bulk tanks to off-main Oahu addresses and every neighbor island. That LPG side is unregulated retail, quoted in dollars per gallon, and is the fuel this page covers at about $4.15 a gallon. If your gas comes from a pipe in the ground in urban Oahu you are almost certainly on SNG; if a truck refills a tank outside your home, you are an LPG customer.

Far less than a mainland home. Hawaii has no winter heating season, so residential propane goes to water heating, which is the dominant load, then cooking, and occasionally a backup generator for hurricane preparedness. A family of four with a propane water heater and a propane range typically burns 100 to 300 gallons a year, roughly $415 to $1245 at current pricing. A home with electric water heating and only a propane range often uses 30 to 80 gallons a year. Off-grid households on the Big Island, Molokai or Lanai running a propane generator, refrigerator and water heater can reach 500 to 800 gallons a year, but that is the exception. The mainland benchmark of 1,000-plus gallons a year for a heating-season home does not describe almost any Hawaii residence, so scale down any national annual-cost figure before you compare islands to the mainland.

Three structural reasons, none of them seasonal. First, import-only supply: Hawaii has no propane production, no propane-yielding refinery capacity and no rail or pipeline link to the mainland, so every gallon arrives by tanker from US Gulf Coast or West Coast ports into Honolulu, Hilo or Kahului, with shipping, port handling and storage baked in before any retail markup. Second, inter-island freight: after tanker discharge on Oahu, propane is barged to Maui, Kauai, the Big Island, Molokai and Lanai, and that leg is one of the largest line items separating a Honolulu quote from a neighbor-island quote. Off-grid neighbor-island addresses routinely pay well above Oahu retail for the same product. Third, no heating-season volume to spread fixed costs across: with demand limited to water heating, cooking and the odd generator, suppliers cannot amortise tanker scheduling and storage over a winter spike the way Northeast and Midwest dealers do, so per-gallon overhead stays high all year. Alaska is the only other state with the same import-only economics, which is why the two sit at the top of the national table.

During a hurricane watch or warning. The single biggest demand spike for Hawaii propane is preparedness refilling in the June to November central-Pacific hurricane season, when a forecast track toward the islands sends households to top up generators and cooking fuel at once. Suppliers can run out of bobtail delivery capacity for 24 to 72 hours when a storm threatens, so tanks sit unfilled even though the per-gallon price has not moved. The fix is calm-weather timing: if your tank is below half in early hurricane season, top it up on an ordinary week. Waiting for the storm warning does not cost you more per gallon, it costs you availability when you need it most.