If you’re an Avista natural gas customer in Oregon, your natural gas rates are lower starting today – good news for the coming winter months. That’s because the Public Utility Commission of Oregon (PUC) approved our request to reduce natural gas rates in Oregon by an overall 8.2 percent.
See the ad we ran in local newspapers.
Today’s decreases are mostly because of lower natural gas prices. Abundant supplies of natural gas and lower demand have continued to push wholesale natural gas prices downward.
You have been seeing the benefits of increased natural gas supply and lower prices for some time. The costs of purchasing natural gas on the wholesale market and transporting it to our delivery pipelines makes up more than half of your natural gas bill, and these costs fluctuate up and down based on market prices. We do not mark these costs up. We pass them directly through to you through Purchased Gas Cost Adjustments, or PGAs, such as this one.
You will see two separate rate adjustments as a result of this PGA. If you are a residential customer using approximately 47 therms a month, you can expect your bill to decrease by $4.78 for a revised monthly bill of $57.22 beginning today. Other customer groups can also expect decreases in a similar range.
You will see an additional decrease of $0.50, beginning Jan. 1, 2013, for a total decrease of $5.28, and a revised monthly bill of $56.72. This is related to Avista’s purchase of the Klamath Falls Lateral, a 15-mile, 6-inch transmission pipeline that interconnects with Gas Transmission Northwest to transport gas to our customers in Klamath Falls. We expect this purchase to save customers approximately $1 million annually beginning in January 2013.
Did you know, if you’re an Oregon natural gas customer, your rates are at levels similar to those from 2004, and even less when you adjust for inflation? This is mostly because of the declining prices of natural gas on the wholesale market.
Read more about natural gas pricing in
our thee-part Avista blog series that helps explain the three main drivers of your natural gas energy bill – wholesale gas costs, fixed transportation costs, and equipment and people.