Natural gas bills in the region are going up next week.
The bill for a typical residential customer will increase between $3 to $12 per month, according to SourceGas Distribution LLC.
SourceGas announced this week that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission approved a general rate increase to the non-gas component of its rates effective Sept. 1.
The company, which serves about 85,000 customers in Colorado, said the new rates will help offset increases in the costs associated with delivering natural gas to its customers.
The last general rate increase in Colorado was filed 14-18 years ago, depending on the service area.
This increase affects the non-gas component of a monthly bill including the monthly “customer charge” and the volumetric “distribution charge.”
The customer charge is the same month-to-month. The distribution charge is a fixed rate that is applied to the amount of gas used each month. The increase does not affect the largest portion of the bill, the natural gas commodity costs, which are based on market prices and currently account for 70 to 80 percent of the total monthly bill.
“We have been able to operate without increasing the distribution rates for our customers for many years and make service improvements by effectively managing our costs,” said Dan Watson, president and CEO of SourceGas. “The newly approved rates also shift a portion of non-gas costs away from that part of the bill that is tied to volume fluctuations. This will help stabilize customer bills, reduce the impact of winter heating bills by spreading more of our cost recovery over the rest of the year and lessen the impact of the volatile commodity prices we’ve seen recently.”
SourceGas is a natural gas distribution utility headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado, with operations in Arkansas, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming.
SourceGas serves nearly 420,000 customers and operates 17,700 miles of distribution, gathering and transmission pipeline, as well as storage facilities.
