Summary. The European Union imported 11.14 million tonnes of propane (HS 271112) from outside the bloc in the twelve months to August 2026, 7.5% less than a year earlier, and paid EUR 5.48 billion for it — an average of EUR 492 per tonne, 4.8% below the prior twelve months. Three origins supplied 90.7% of the book: the United States 6.61 Mt (59.3%), Algeria 2.13 Mt (19.1%) and Norway 1.37 Mt (12.3%). Russia, which shipped 347,000 tonnes in 2024, shipped 478 tonnes in January 2025 and nothing since. The twelve-month average conceals two regimes: monthly import unit values fell to EUR 405 per tonne in November 2025, rose to EUR 695 in April 2026 and eased to EUR 480 in August, while imports in January–August 2026 ran 12.8% below the same months of 2025.
Data updated: 2026-11-07
Latest 12 months: a cheap winter, then a spring repricing
Table 1 covers September 2025 to August 2026 for HS 271112, EU27 trade with non-EU partners, from Eurostat Comext DS-045409 (dataset refreshed 16 October 2026). Unit values are declared value divided by net mass — a border ratio that includes freight and insurance on imports, not a market price and not a like-for-like terminal comparison.
| Month | Imports (t) | Import value (EUR m) | Import unit value (EUR/t) | Exports (t) | Export value (EUR m) | Export unit value (EUR/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-09 | 1,024,586 | 436.5 | 426 | 24,182 | 12.0 | 495 |
| 2025-10 | 1,031,477 | 433.1 | 420 | 25,267 | 12.5 | 495 |
| 2025-11 | 1,069,624 | 433.5 | 405 | 27,866 | 14.9 | 533 |
| 2025-12 | 1,134,065 | 475.2 | 419 | 40,134 | 20.1 | 500 |
| 2026-01 | 866,422 | 380.4 | 439 | 31,388 | 15.9 | 506 |
| 2026-02 | 977,118 | 456.5 | 467 | 38,360 | 19.5 | 508 |
| 2026-03 | 995,449 | 584.8 | 587 | 25,918 | 17.1 | 661 |
| 2026-04 | 849,573 | 590.3 | 695 | 27,214 | 21.3 | 781 |
| 2026-05 | 724,857 | 434.5 | 599 | 26,089 | 18.0 | 689 |
| 2026-06 | 788,187 | 426.8 | 541 | 24,591 | 14.4 | 587 |
| 2026-07 | 903,985 | 451.8 | 500 | 17,975 | 10.3 | 573 |
| 2026-08 | 775,515 | 372.4 | 480 | 19,631 | 11.5 | 588 |
| Total | 11,140,858 | 5,475.8 | 492 | 328,615 | 187.4 | 570 |
Monthly imports ran from 724,857 tonnes in May 2026 to 1,134,065 tonnes in December 2025 and averaged 928,405 tonnes. Exports are a rounding item at 328,615 tonnes, 3.0% of import volume.
Analysis. The unit-value series splits the year in two. From September 2025 to February 2026 the EU border value sat between EUR 405 and EUR 467 per tonne and imports held at 6.10 Mt over those six months. From March the value stepped up to EUR 587, peaked at EUR 695 in April and fell back to EUR 480 by August. The April peak was a 48.8% rise on February within two months, and every supplier moved with it: US material went from EUR 465 to EUR 683 between February and April, Algerian from EUR 456 to EUR 691, Norwegian from EUR 458 to EUR 630. A move that uniform is a market repricing, not a change in the mix of grades inside the heading.
The volume response was concentrated in the same window. Imports fell 10.2% in April–June 2026 against the same three months of 2025 (2.36 Mt against 2.63 Mt), with April, May and August the three weakest months of the twelve-month window.
The annual record: a flat book, a replaced supplier list
Table 2 aggregates the same monthly series to calendar years. The 2026 column is January–August only and is not comparable with the full years above it.
| Period | Imports (kt) | Import value (EUR m) | Import unit value (EUR/t) | Exports (kt) | Export unit value (EUR/t) | Net balance (t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 11,623 | 4,175.8 | 359 | 484 | 411 | −11,139,293 |
| 2020 | 11,487 | 3,453.4 | 301 | 377 | 368 | −11,110,720 |
| 2021 | 10,795 | 5,610.0 | 520 | 373 | 555 | −10,422,278 |
| 2022 | 12,282 | 8,027.5 | 654 | 479 | 764 | −11,803,338 |
| 2023 | 12,421 | 6,256.8 | 504 | 391 | 598 | −12,030,011 |
| 2024 | 12,121 | 6,383.2 | 527 | 368 | 602 | −11,753,408 |
| 2025 | 12,148 | 5,692.4 | 469 | 311 | 550 | −11,837,357 |
| 2026 (Jan–Aug) | 6,881 | 3,697.4 | 537 | 211 | 606 | −6,669,940 |
Imports have been between 10.8 and 12.4 Mt every year since 2019 and ended 2025 at 12.15 Mt, a 0.2% increase on 2024; the aggregate looks almost static. The value line is not: EUR 3.45 billion in 2020 at EUR 301 per tonne, EUR 8.03 billion in 2022 at EUR 654, and EUR 5.69 billion in 2025 at EUR 469 — 28.3% below the 2022 peak in unit value.
2026 breaks the pattern in both directions: 6.88 Mt in January–August against 7.89 Mt a year earlier, down 12.8%, while the average border value rose 8.3% to EUR 537 per tonne. Volume down and price up is the signature of a supply-side year, not a demand-led one.
Analysis. Net imports — imports minus extra-EU exports — have been between 10.4 and 12.0 Mt in every year of the series, and 2026 is running at 6.67 Mt for eight months. Re-exports are 3.0% of imports and cannot be arbitraged against the import book; what the dataset describes is a gross import requirement, which is why the supplier list matters more than the total.
Origins: the US replaced Russia, then lost share in 2026
Table 3 breaks the import book down by origin. Only non-EU origins are shown; intra-EU shipments are excluded from the Eurostat extra-EU aggregate.
| Origin | 2024 (kt) | 2025 (kt) | L12 (kt) | L12 value (EUR m) | L12 unit value (EUR/t) | Prior 12M (kt) | Jan–Aug 2026 (kt) | Jan–Aug 2025 (kt) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 6,881 | 7,878 | 6,608 | 3,124.5 | 473 | 7,467 | 3,739 | 5,009 |
| Algeria | 1,974 | 1,996 | 2,126 | 1,038.1 | 488 | 1,962 | 1,411 | 1,280 |
| Norway | 1,853 | 1,258 | 1,371 | 738.9 | 539 | 1,438 | 1,018 | 905 |
| United Kingdom | 642 | 474 | 509 | 282.5 | 555 | 519 | 343 | 308 |
| Egypt | 170 | 213 | 193 | 106.7 | 553 | 231 | 118 | 137 |
| Equatorial Guinea | 57 | 41 | 101 | 59.6 | 589 | 36 | 81 | 20 |
| Libya | 69 | 81 | 88 | 49.3 | 559 | 84 | 67 | 59 |
| Kazakhstan | 62 | 113 | 68 | 37.8 | 558 | 109 | 41 | 87 |
| Russia | 347 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | n/a | 85 | 0 | 0 |
| Other non-EU | 66 | 94 | 76 | 38.4 | 508 | 111 | 63 | 84 |
| Total | 12,121 | 12,148 | 11,141 | 5,475.8 | 492 | 12,042 | 6,881 | 7,889 |
Three numbers describe the last three years. In 2024 the US supplied 6.88 Mt, or 56.8% of imports. In 2025 it supplied 7.88 Mt, or 64.8%, a 14.5% increase in a year when the total barely moved. In January–August 2026 it supplied 3.74 Mt, or 54.3% of a smaller book, 25.3% below the same months of 2025. Algeria and Norway took the other side of that 2026 move: Algeria 1.41 Mt (+10.2%) and Norway 1.02 Mt (+12.4%), lifting their combined share from 27.7% to 35.3%.
Russia’s exit is the cleanest structural change in the series. Russian propane ran at 18,800 to 38,200 tonnes a month through 2024, totalling 347,000 tonnes, then 478 tonnes in January 2025 and zero in every month since. The legal basis is public: the Council’s twelfth sanctions package of 18 December 2023 introduced an import ban on liquefied propane with a twelve-month transitional period, and the Commission’s nineteenth package of 23 October 2025 added a ban on a variant of LPG that had been used to circumvent the existing restrictions.
Analysis. The important point is not that Russia left but that nothing else changed when it did. Imports in 2025 were 12.15 Mt against 12.12 Mt in 2024: the 347,000 tonnes were replaced within the year, mostly by the US (+997,000 tonnes) while Norway fell 594,000 tonnes. A supplier accounting for 2.9% of the book can be removed without a price event when the replacement barrel is available at the same border value — and the 2025 average value fell 11%, so the substitution was, if anything, cheaper.
The price ladder inside the book is stable and worth knowing. Over the twelve months to August 2026 US propane entered at EUR 473 per tonne, Algerian at EUR 488, Norwegian at EUR 539 and UK at EUR 555. US material was 12.2% cheaper than Norwegian, a gap of EUR 66 per tonne that persisted through both the cheap and the expensive phases of the year. Because HS 271112 is propane only — butane sits in 271113 — the gap cannot be a grade effect within the heading. It is what a large Gulf Coast cargo costs at the EU border against smaller North Sea lots: a difference in lot size, freight and contract structure that buyers should read as a logistics gap rather than as a market inefficiency to arbitrage.
Destinations: a re-export book of 329,000 tonnes
| Destination | L12 (t) | L12 value (EUR m) | L12 unit value (EUR/t) | Prior 12M (t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Norway | 99,868 | 54.5 | 546 | 122,828 |
| United Kingdom | 64,851 | 39.6 | 610 | 73,926 |
| Ukraine | 44,980 | 26.1 | 581 | 23,600 |
| Morocco | 33,633 | 16.9 | 503 | 26,586 |
| Switzerland | 33,402 | 18.0 | 539 | 20,455 |
| Tunisia | 12,223 | 5.8 | 471 | 23,285 |
| Other non-EU | 39,659 | 26.5 | 669 | 27,584 |
| Total | 328,615 | 187.4 | 570 | 318,263 |
Norway took 99,868 tonnes, the UK 64,851, Ukraine 44,980, Morocco 33,633 and Switzerland 33,402; with Tunisia these six destinations account for 88% of the total.
Analysis. These are storage, blending and coastal-delivery flows, not a trading position: Ukraine up 91%, Morocco up 26% and Norway down 19% reflects where winter stocks were short. At 329,000 tonnes the export line cannot move an 11 Mt import requirement.
Outside Europe: India paid up and stayed up
India is the closest comparator in scale. It imported 10.96 Mt of HS 271112 in 2024, worth USD 7.10 billion, or USD 648 per tonne, according to UN Comtrade. Its reported 2025 import value fell to USD 6.95 billion, but the 2025 record carries no net mass, so no 2025 volume or unit value can be computed.
Its 2026 months can. India imported 996,300 tonnes in January at USD 547 per tonne, 514,200 tonnes in March at USD 601, 548,100 in April at USD 715, 606,600 in May at USD 816, 747,100 in June at USD 834, 742,800 in July at USD 788 and 696,600 in August at USD 719. On the export side, reported US exports of HS 271112 were worth USD 23.24 billion in 2025 against USD 23.49 billion in 2024, but the US record also carries no net mass, so no volume or unit value can be derived.
Analysis. India’s border value kept rising into June and was still USD 719 in August, while the EU’s had fallen to EUR 480. The two markets did not diverge because of demand; they diverged because the cargoes went where the premium was. That is the mechanism behind the 2026 fall in EU imports, and it is the mechanism to watch when shipping routes normalise.
Analysis and outlook
Analysis. The shock that repriced this market in March 2026 is documented by the IEA: the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz at the start of March 2026 removed almost 20% of global LNG supply, flipped the JKM–TTF spread from a European premium to an Asian premium, and moderated after the mid-April ceasefire. Propane and LNG are separate markets and the IEA report is not a propane price series. What Eurostat adds is timing and breadth: the EU propane border value rose 48.8% between February and April in every origin at once, then fell 30.9% by August while volumes fell. Uniform movement across unrelated suppliers, with volumes falling as prices rise, points to a common freight and energy shock rather than a European cargo shortage.
Outlook. Three things are worth watching into the 2026/27 winter, all visible in the tables above. First, whether the US share recovers above 60% once Hormuz routing normalises: it fell from 64.8% in 2025 to 54.3% in January–August 2026, and the 1.27 Mt the US did not deliver to Europe in those eight months coincides with the period in which Asian buyers were paying a premium. Second, whether Norway’s 2026 recovery (+12.4%) holds; Norwegian volumes fell 32% in 2025 and are the only North Sea barrels in the book. Third, whether the unit value settles near EUR 480 or near EUR 537: August is the first full post-ceasefire month, and it is closer to the 2025 average of EUR 469 than to the 2026 average of EUR 537.
A 59% single-origin dependence inside an 11 Mt import requirement is the structural fact a procurement team should carry into 2027. The Russian exit showed the book can absorb a 347,000-tonne loss without a price event. It does not follow that it can absorb a 6.6 Mt one.
Data notes and limitations
- One product, one heading. HS 271112 covers liquefied propane only. Butane (271113) and mixed LPG are separate headings and are excluded; the totals here are therefore not the whole LPG market.
- Unit values are border ratios. Eurostat value divided by net mass includes freight and insurance on imports and excludes them on exports. A freight or war-risk premium lifts the import ratio without any change in the cargo’s FOB value.
- Extra-EU only. Intra-EU shipments are excluded throughout; a Netherlands-to-Germany cargo appears in no table here.
- Monthly data ends in August 2026. The Comext dataset was refreshed on 16 October 2026; the last complete month for the EU27 aggregate at the time of writing was August 2026. The 2026 column is eight months and is not annualised.
- No paid assessments and no estimates. All price evidence is declared customs value from Eurostat and UN Comtrade; all policy evidence is EU legal acts and an IEA public report. Where a series cannot produce a volume or unit value, the text says so.
Sources
- Eurostat Comext DS-045409, monthly extra-EU imports of HS 271112, January 2019 to August 2026: API query, flow 1
- Eurostat Comext DS-045409, monthly extra-EU exports of HS 271112: API query, flow 2
- Eurostat Comext DS-045409, dataset entry point: EU trade since 1988 by HS
- Eurostat, international trade in goods database: database entry point
- Council of the EU, twelfth package of sanctions, 18 December 2023 (import ban on liquefied propane with a twelve-month transitional period): press release
- European Commission, nineteenth package of sanctions, 23 October 2025 (import ban on a variant of LPG): news article
- IEA, Gas Market Report, Q2-2026: report page and executive summary
- UN Comtrade, India annual imports of HS 271112, 2024: preview API
- UN Comtrade, India annual imports of HS 271112, 2025 (value only): preview API
- UN Comtrade, India monthly imports of HS 271112, August 2026: preview API
- UN Comtrade, United States annual exports of HS 271112, 2025 (value only): preview API
- UN Comtrade database: comtradeplus.un.org
PetroApex maintains the monthly propane panel behind this article — extra-EU volumes, declared values, unit values and origin and destination lanes for HS 271112, with India and the United States run as outside benchmarks — and can cut it to a specific origin, destination, grade or period. To request a sample report or a custom data extract, contact our research team. For the chain view, see the propane market analysis page, the downstream propylene page that takes PDH volume, the competing cracker feedstock naphtha page, and the polypropylene trade analysis at the end of the chain.