Colorado General Rate Increase
September, 2008
SourceGas Distribution LLC (SourceGas) announced that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has approved a general rate increase to the non-gas component of its rates effective Sept. 1. The new rates will help offset significant increases in the costs associated with providing natural gas service to approximately 85,000 SourceGas customers across Colorado.
The bill for a typical residential customer will increase approximately $3 to $12 per month. Individual customers may experience an increase that is lower or higher, depending on the amount of gas they use. The last general rate increase in Colorado was filed 14 -18 years ago depending on the service area.
A thorough analysis has demonstrated that SourceGas cannot continue to absorb the higher costs and must adjust the rates in order to keep pace. The increase affects the non-gas component of a monthly bill including the monthly Customer Charge and the volumetric Distribution Charge. The Customer Charge is the same month-to-month. The Distribution Charge is a fixed rate that is applied to the amount of gas used each month.
The increase does not affect the largest portion of the bill, the natural gas commodity costs, which are based on market prices and currently account for 70 to 80 percent of the total monthly bill. The newly approved rates shift a portion of non-gas costs away from that part of the bill that is tied to volume fluctuations helping to stabilize customer bills, reduce the impact of winter heating bills by spreading more of our cost recovery over the rest of the year and lessen the impact of the volatile commodity prices we’ve seen recently.