Natural gas bills include some good news

Eunice residents bracing for a big jump in their natural gas bills will get some good news with their current bills.
Those bills are based on readings which include the spell of bitterly cold weather which prompted a surge in home heating.
The good news is that the fuel charge to the city for natural gas this month is $3.61 per thousand cubic feet, only 59 cents more than the January charge.
Of course, the bad news is that most households burned more gas in an effort to keep homes at bearable or comfortable temperatures.
A sense of comparison: last summer the fuel charge, which is passed along by the city back to the gas supplier, was about $11 one month.
Of course little gas is used by residential customers during hot weather so they didn’t notice that inordinate jump.
At one point last winter, the fuel adjustment charge reached about $6.
What does all this mean?
If you burned 15,000 cubic feet of gas in the previous billing cycle your bill was $84.30 ($2.60 per thousand for the city’s rate share, and $3.02 for the gas supplier’s).
If you burned 15,000 cubic feet in the current cycle, your bill would rise to $93.15 ($2.60 per thousand for the city, $3.61 for the gas company.
In both cases, the city’s revenue is $39.
By comparison, when the fuel charge hit $6 last winter the same 15,000 cubic feet of gas would have cost you a total of $129.
The city’s base rate has not changed since being set by ordinance in the early 1990’s.