Public Service Commission of West Virginia.
CHARLESTON, W. Va.–The state Public Service Commission has advised natural gas utilities that it won’t approve winter rates before Dec. 1.
In a procedural order the PSC said the new rates would not take effect on Nov. 1 as is usually the case. The commission continues to work on possible solutions to a sticker shock increase in rates because gas purchase prices have increased significantly for the utilities.
The natural gas distributors are reimbursed annually for what they pay for gas. The struggle this year is if that reimbursement should happen all at once because of the significant increase.
The order said, “the Commission will endeavor to issue interim rate orders prior to December 1, 2022; that the gas utilities are authorized to continue to charge their current purchased gas adjustment rate increments on and after November 1, 2022 until those rates are modified by further order of the Commission.”
The PSC ordered the utilities last month to submit the plans after most all of them originally submitted significant winter rate increases.
The PSC asked for ideas “that may reduce and/or levelize the rate impact of the filings.”
Most of the plans that came in proposed levelizing the increase by charging less of an increase during the winter and then catching back up next spring.
Mountaineer Gas, the largest natural gas utility in the state, proposed reducing its purchased gas rate for the winter by $1 per Mcf used from $9.85 to $8.85 which would mean about $11 more a month for the average customer.
Mountaineer Gas Senior Vice President Moses Skaff told MetroNews the gas distribution companies don’t have a lot of choices.
“This is the best alternative that we could come up because of the price of the gas, the commodity price, that we have to buy at this time,” Skaff said.