Gas Line Repair in Opelousas, LA
Opelousas is a town of two systems. 33% take mains gas and 2% use propane, and only one of those arrangements has a utility on the other side of it.
Read this first
In Opelousas, 33% of homes are on mains gas and 2% on bottled, so the town average settles nothing about any one address. Mains gas ends the utility's regulated line at the meter outlet; a tank supply has no such boundary.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey table B25040; the service line boundary is 49 CFR § 192.3.
If you smell gas right now
Leave the building on foot. Do not use a phone or a light switch inside. Call 911 and your gas utility from somewhere else, and do not call us — we are a referral service, not an emergency line. The full list, in order.
How Opelousas is supplied
In a town with both, the useful page is the one about the arrangement you actually have. The meter is the tell: if there is one, there is a service line behind it and a boundary at its outlet.
| Households in Opelousas | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 33% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 2% |
| Electricity | 64% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 0% |
| Wood and everything else | 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 14,788 occupied housing units. What B25040 measures is the heating fuel, not the connection. It is the closest published proxy for whether there is a buried service line here, and it is a proxy. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Louisiana as a whole, 35% of households are on mains gas and 1% on tank propane. Opelousas sits about level with the state on mains and 1 point above it on propane. The state number would tell you something true about the state and very little about here, which is why it is not the number above.
Before anyone digs on the property
Digging is the risk, not age or material. PHMSA names excavation damage as the leading cause of pipeline incidents and puts a caller’s chance of avoiding one at 99 percent. 8-1-1 is nationwide, toll-free, and costs nothing.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask which side of the meter the work is on before anything else. On the utility side it may not be a contractor job at all, and a quote that has not established that has not established whose problem it is.
Other Louisiana towns we route in
- Saint Martinville 17% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Kenner 37% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Arabi 51% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Slidell 32% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Harvey 29% mains gas · under 1% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Louisiana
Louisiana licenses are issued by the State Plumbing Board of Louisiana, which publishes a public search you can use before work begins.
Gas work is separately permitted and separately licensed in most jurisdictions, so ask specifically about gas rather than plumbing in general.
For repair work, not for a suspected leak.If you can smell gas, leave and call 911 or your utility from outside; this is the wrong number for that. For everything else — a line, a meter, an appliance connection — we will route you to a contractor covering your area, free of charge to you. Other Opelousas requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038