Propane in the Midwest soared to another record premium over prices on the Gulf Coast Thursday, as supplies of the heating fuel fell to the lowest level for this time of year since at least 1994 amid a cold front.

Propane at the rack in Conway, Kansas, ranged from $3.62 to $4.50 a gallon Thursday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The spot price Wednesday in Conway was $1.72 more than at Mont Belvieu, Texas, the largest premium since at least 2001. Last year, propane at Conway sold at an average discount of 2.8 cents to Mont Belvieu. They are the top two U.S. propane storage hubs.

Supplies of propane and propylene in the Midwest fell by 1.34 million barrels to 10.2 million last week, the Energy Information Administration said today. That’s the lowest level for mid-January since the EIA began keeping data in 1993. January may end up as the coldest month for the contiguous 48 U.S. states in the 21st century so far, said Matt Rogers, president of the Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland.

“This is your classic case where you’re doing a supply-and-demand curve and demand is straight up, so you get a straight-up move in price,” said Anne Keller, manager of natural gas liquids research at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting company in Houston.

Propane supplies throughout the U.S. fell by 3.39 million barrels to 35.3 million, the lowest level since June 2011 and the lowest for this time of year since 2001.

Propane Tankers

DCP Midstream Partners LP has brought two propane tanker ships into its Providence, Rhode Island, terminal since September and has three more booked for February after bringing in only one ship in 2013 before September, Lisa Newkirk, a Denver-based spokeswoman for the company, said by e-mail.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP’s Cochin pipeline, which transports propane to the Midwest from Alberta, is operating below capacity at about 50,000 barrels a day because there isn’t enough supply in Western Canada to fill the line, Karen Kabin, the company’s vice president of business development for NGLs North, said in an interview at the Argus Americas Crude Summit in Houston Thursday.

Supply issues in the Midwest date back to 2011 and 2012, when increased production from shale formations inundated Conway and sent prices to an average discount of 10.4 cents a gallon and 18.9 cents a gallon below prices in Mont Belvieu.

New Pipelines

Companies built pipelines such as the DCP Midstream Partners LP’s 175,000-barrel-a-day Southern Hills system to allow producers to ship propane and other natural gas liquids to the Gulf Coast. Enterprise Products Partners LP and Targa Resources Partners LP were among companies that last year opened docks on the Gulf Coast for NGL exports.

“Infrastructure changes allowed growing supplies of propane and NGLs to travel south to the Gulf Coast or through the Midwest via Conway to the Gulf Coast,” said T. Mason Hamilton, a Washington-based petroleum markets analyst with the EIA. “The propane went to where the prices dictated.”

Midwest supplies were further depleted by a heavy crop- drying season last fall, followed by severe winter weather in December and January, Keller said. The Midwest accounts for 36 percent of propane for home heating, followed by the South at 34 percent, EIA data show.

“People expect ordinarily to have a couple months to refill and reload the wagons for January,” she said. “Instead, we segued right out of a big crop-drying season to winter, and that was all she wrote.”