Last Updated: June 20, 2026

Manufacturing Natural Gas Prices by State: 2026 Data Report

Natural gas is one of the few input costs that can quietly decide where a plant expands, where a furnace line stays profitable, and how painful the next contract renewal feels. In 2024, the U.S. industrial natural gas price averaged $4.07 per thousand cubic feet, up from $4.53 in 2023 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

This report ranks the 50 states by industrial natural gas price, industrial consumption, year-over-year price change, and estimated industrial gas spend. It is written for manufacturers comparing locations, checking utility exposure, or building a sourced benchmark for sales decks, board slides, and site-selection work.

Methodology and Source Notes

The price column uses EIA's annual Natural Gas Industrial Price series, reported in nominal dollars per thousand cubic feet. The volume column uses EIA's annual Natural Gas Industrial Consumption series, reported in million cubic feet. The estimated spend column multiplies industrial price by industrial consumption and converts the result to billions of dollars.

This is industrial natural gas data, not a manufacturing-only utility bill survey. That matters. The industrial sector includes manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and construction. For manufacturing analysis, it is still the closest public state-level benchmark because EIA says much of industrial natural gas demand comes from the chemicals subsector and other manufacturing industries. EIA also reported that natural gas consumption in manufacturing increased by more than all other energy sources combined from 2018 to 2022 in its Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey release.

Treat the numbers as a location benchmark, not a delivered contract quote. A real plant bill depends on service class, transport charges, interruptible versus firm supply, local distribution tariffs, hedging, demand swings, taxes, and whether the plant buys gas directly or through a utility. The state-level spread is still useful because it shows the structural cost gap a gas-heavy operation has to overcome.

Searchers often compare natural gas rates by state, residential natural gas bills, and manufacturing fuel costs in the same pass. This page focuses on industrial buyers, not residential customers, because the price of natural gas used by plants is reported in a different EIA series. For context, EIA tracks United States natural gas supply, gas production, consumption, storage, natural gas reserves, and prices in its Natural Gas Monthly and expresses energy content in British thermal units, million British thermal units, and trillion cubic feet. Those broader tables on natural gas in the U.S. explain supply and demand dynamics, but the top 10 states for manufacturers depend on industrial natural gas prices, industrial users, industrial sectors, and industrial customers, not household bills.

All-State Industrial Natural Gas Price Ranking

The national industrial price was $4.07/Mcf in 2024, while the unweighted state average in this dataset was $7.15/Mcf and the median state price was $6.00/Mcf. The gap between North Dakota at $2.21/Mcf and Hawaii at $28.35/Mcf shows why fuel cost belongs in every manufacturing site-selection model.

Lowest-Cost States for Industrial Natural Gas

The cheapest states are not always the states with the biggest manufacturing base, but many sit close to production basins, pipeline hubs, or large industrial corridors. For a heat-intensive manufacturer, a difference of $1 per Mcf equals $1 million per year for every 1 Bcf of annual gas use. That math gets serious fast for glass, ceramics, chemicals, metals, food processing, paper, and building products plants.

The 10 states with the cheapest industrial natural gas give manufacturers a starting list for deeper utility due diligence. These are the states with the cheapest industrial benchmark in the EIA table, but the actual cost of natural gas for a plant still depends on transportation, load factor, and service terms.

Highest-Cost States for Industrial Natural Gas

High-price states are not automatically bad manufacturing states. Some have strong labor pools, ports, aerospace clusters, food demand, medical device customers, or proximity to dense end markets. But a gas-heavy process has to price the tradeoff clearly. In the most expensive states, energy productivity and contract strategy matter more because the base commodity cost starts higher.

The 10 states with the highest industrial natural gas rates are a warning flag for process-heavy plants. Natural gas rates vary by pipeline access, local utility tariffs, LNG exposure in remote markets, weather, demand, and natural gas futures, so high-cost states deserve a tighter sensitivity model before a manufacturer signs a lease or buys land.

Expensive rates can also reflect transportation costs, import exposure, winter demand, or distance from Henry Hub in Louisiana. A trader may watch US natural gas futures, but a plant manager cares about delivered fuel, Btu content, generator economics, process heat, and electricity generation costs. The US Energy Information Administration data is the cleanest public starting point for that comparison.

Largest Industrial Natural Gas Markets

Consumption volume tells a different story than price. Texas, Louisiana, California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are large industrial gas markets because they combine refining, chemicals, food, metals, and broad manufacturing demand. EIA reported U.S. industrial consumption of 8,579.8 Bcf in 2024, compared with 8,552.7 Bcf in 2023, from its industrial consumption series.

Biggest 2023 to 2024 Price Moves

Year-to-year movement matters because it affects quotes, margins, and capital planning. A plant can usually manage a high but stable utility cost. Sudden changes are harder because purchasing, sales, and finance teams may all be working from stale assumptions.

Largest Increases

Largest Declines

How Manufacturers Should Use This Benchmark

Start with process intensity. Natural gas barely moves the needle for an assembly operation that mainly uses electricity, compressed air, and labor. It can be a board-level cost for a plant with ovens, dryers, kilns, boilers, process heat, steam, or feedstock demand. That is why a single state average is not enough. You need to map the state price to your own Mcf per unit, your takt time, your operating schedule, and your contract exposure.

Next, compare fuel cost against customer proximity. A lower gas price may be wiped out by freight, lead time, workforce gaps, permitting drag, or supplier distance. On the other hand, a high-price state may still win if it keeps you close to medical device customers, aerospace primes, food distribution centers, ports, or specialized labor. The right question is not "which state is cheapest?" It is "which state gives this specific product line the best delivered margin?"

Finally, use this data to ask better questions of utilities and economic development teams. Ask whether your process qualifies for interruptible rates, whether pipeline capacity is constrained, what tariff riders apply, how often rates reset, and whether combined heat and power, waste heat recovery, or electrification incentives change the economics. EIA's national forecast says industrial natural gas consumption averaged a record 23.6 Bcf per day in 2025 and is expected to increase in 2026 and 2027, according to its May 2026 analysis. That demand backdrop makes local pricing questions worth asking early.

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Sources

1. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Natural Gas Industrial Price, annual state table
2. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Natural Gas Industrial Consumption, annual state table
3. EIA Open Data API, natural gas price endpoint
4. EIA Open Data API, natural gas consumption endpoint
5. EIA Today in Energy, U.S. industrial natural gas consumption expected to hit records in 2026 and 2027
6. EIA Today in Energy, U.S. manufacturing energy consumption has continued to increase since 2010 low
7. EIA Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey
8. EIA Natural Gas Annual