Here’s why your gas bills are so much higher right now

Source: SiliconValley.com  |  By Teri Sforza

THE PAIN IS REAL.

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.

Katy Morsony, staff attorney with The Utility Reform Network, which keeps a critical eye on the PUC, agrees.

“No one should have to choose between making dinner and heating the house,” she said. “We’re calling on the CPUC and the utilities to use all the tools they have to help maximize the ability of customers to pay their bills. And we certainly would call on the CPUC to investigate exactly what is driving these spikes and how we can prevent them.”

The group Consumer Watchdog isn’t buying the explanations we’re being fed.

“I am calling on you to launch an investigation into Southern California Gas’s role in the recent dramatic increases in the costs of natural gas and its parent company SEMPRA’s role in the cost increases,” the group wrote to the state Attorney General.

“The doubling of natural gas prices is unique to California. While the utility has made natural gas available to its customers as it is required to do, it has purchased gas at unreasonably high prices, with higher profits for SoCalGas’s parent company SEMPRA, that sells natural gas to So Cal Gas through its other subsidiaries. Most importantly, Southern Gas has deceived its customers about the fact that it is profiting from the increase in natural gas costs.

“So Cal Gas widely stated that ‘SoCalGas and SDG&E do not profit from gas commodity prices going up.’ In fact, SEMPRA, the parent company of both utilities, and its other subsidiaries, profits greatly from the increase in natural gas prices ….”