Natural Gas Bill

Everything is more expensive.

I just saw some posts on Nextdoor about crazy high natural gas bills so I logged into my SoCal Gas account online. Here is my payment history:

My average bill for the past six months was about $20, so the $128 bill in December is a huge increase. Looking back, this happens every winter since our house has a natural gas furnace, and it has been pretty cold at night. If you look at the usage in therms (usage), it has the same pattern.

Compared to last year however, it does seem I am paying more for gas per Therm. I found this notice on their website and indeed, every cost component is going up. For the natural gas itself, the price has gone up over 100% from a year ago.

Effective January 2021.Effective January 1, 2022, the procurement component of the core sales rate will increase 18.440 ¢/therm to 83.569 ¢/therm. This increase resulted from an overall 16.922 ¢/therm increase in commodity price and an increase of 1.518 ¢/therm in account adjustments. Compared to a year ago, the procurement rate is about 110.2% higher (39.764 ¢/therm) than what it was effective January 2021.

https://www.socalgas.com/pay-bill/understanding-your-bill/natural-gas-prices-explained#rate-change

Since natural gas is a traded commodity, i looked up some quotes online. The price did seem to increase from ~$2.50 USD/MMBtu a year ago to $4.16 today. Now quite 100% increase, but SoCal Gas is probably grabbing some margin too. Looking at my latest statement, the gas commodity cost was $0.65129 per therm in December so the additional 18.440 ¢/therm increase will show up in January’s billing. This means my January bill could be over $150.

Need to convince my parents to turn down the thermostat.