Column: Winter has brought big price jumps from SoCalGas. Here are some reasons why and what the future looks like.
None of us lives in Hearst Castle. Yet my natural gas bill shot from $44 to nearly $300 in the span of two months. Kay Kearney’s is projected to hit $368 in January — more than three times what she paid this time last year. And Burl Estes is staring down a $397 tab for having the audacity to keep warm.
With good intentions and pure heart, more or less, California hurtles headlong toward 100% renewable energy. We snub fossil fuel power plants and natural gas storage facilities in our quest to quell global warming. But we don’t yet have enough reliable — and“It’s like taking a ship into harbor but, before getting to the dock, saying, ‘Everyone off now!’” said Shon R. Hiatt, associate professor at USC Marshall School of Business, who specializes in global energy.
“SoCalGas doesn’t set the price for natural gas,” the company explains . “Instead, natural gas prices are determined by national and regional markets. SoCalGas buys natural gas in those markets on behalf of residential and small business customers, and the cost of buying that gas is billed to those customers with no markup, meaning SoCalGas does not profit from gas commodity prices going up.”
Folks carped a lot last year, when prices rose to some $8 a dekatherm. But at the end of December, prices soared as high as $50 a dekatherm and averaged about $42 a dekatherm, more than 5 times last year’s high price, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
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