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In article <sro1ug$84j8$19@news.freedyn.de>
governor.swill@gmail.com wrote:

...Cut Democrat salaries. Let them bear the offset for their poor decisions.

Southern California residents, get ready for a severe case of
sticker shock as your natural gas bills across the region soar
more than double this winter, according to the region’s two
chief utility companies.

Southern California Gas Company — a subsidiary of Sempra Energy
that serves more than 21.8 million customers in Central and
Southern California — along with Long Beach Utilities, the
city’s independent gas provider, recently warned customers to
prepare for unavoidable increases in their gas bills this month.

“There’s no easy way to put this: January bills are likely to be
shockingly high,” SoCalGas said in a Thursday, Dec. 29
announcement. “As a result, our customers can expect to see
higher gas bills in the coming weeks.”

Long Beach Utilities put out a similar statement on Wednesday,
Jan. 4.

Then on Jan. 6 SoCalGas announced a $1 million contribution to
the Gas Assistance Fund, its program to help lower income
customers pay their natural gas bills. Gillian Wright, senior
vice president and chief customer officer at the utility, said,
“We know that these higher prices have a real impact on our
customers.”

SoCalGas rates are expected to more than double over the cost of
last winter. If a customer’s natural gas bill totaled $130 last
winter, for example, that household can expect a $315 bill this
winter, according to the gas company. And the average Long Beach
single-family residential customer should prepare for an
increase of $200 or more on their bill, that city’s utility said.

“Facing the highest natural gas prices in Long Beach’s history,
Long Beach Utilities took swift action to mitigate the impact on
customers as much as possible,” the department said. “These
actions will save customers $10 million and bring the average
bill in at about 4 percent less than those of SoCalGas.”

Though gas bills tend to increase slightly during the winter as
more gas is used to combat cold weather, both companies
attributed the rate increases to corresponding hikes in the
market cost of natural gas — which, for a slew of interconnected
reasons including the California drought, unexpected severe cold
snaps across the country, and Russia’s war in Ukraine has jumped
about 128% since November.

“Our customers are understandably shocked by these high market
prices suddenly experienced throughout Southern California,”
Long Beach Utilities General Manager Chris Garner said in its
announcement. “While there are legitimate market forces that
have resulted in the cost increase, that does not ease the
financial impact to our residents, who rely on natural gas to
heat their homes, cook their food and warm their showers.”

Since late November, lower-than-usual temperatures have
stretched from Western Canada to California, fueling an
increased demand for natural gas. Natural gas consumption in
both residential and consumer sectors throughout California and
the Pacific Northwest was up 23% in the first three weeks of
December, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration.

To make matters worse, natural gas supply has not kept pace with
the increased demand and U.S. natural gas exports to Europe are
up significantly, putting an even greater strain on availability.

“Europe relies heavily on Russian gas for its energy needs —
especially during the wintertime with heating,” said Brian Peck,
the University of Southern California’s Transnational Law and
Business Center director in a Thursday, Jan. 5 interview. “And
so as part of the U.S.-led effort to provide Western support for
Ukraine, they have asked Europe to wean itself off of reliance
on Russian gas.”

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed a deal with the
European Union to increase American exports of liquified natural
gas to Europe by 15 billion cubic meters. The deal came after
both the U.S. and Britain issued bans on Russian oil — and
pressured the EU to join the effort to undercut a major source
of Russian revenue.

But for the EU, which gets more than 40% of its liquified
natural gas from Russia — an outright ban on the fuel wasn’t
possible without major economic consequences for its residents.
Biden’s deal to expand gas shipments to the EU, Peck said, aimed
to help wean the collection of countries off of Russian natural
gas over the next five years.

“The U.S. has pledged to support exports of liquefied natural
gas to help Europe wean itself off and become less reliant on
Russian oil, which would then decrease gas revenues to Russia’s
regime,” Peck said. “(It also) help(s) insulate Europe from
Russia’s restrictions on gas until Europe can wean itself off
the supply.”

International relations aren’t the only factor stressing the
supply of natural gas in Southern California. Along with the new
year, the state celebrated a much more grim milestone: Its
fourth year of severe drought.

Though the recent storms have brought much-needed water to the
state’s reservoirs, the situation remains bleak — with the
Metropolitan Water District’s Board of Directors recently
declaring a regional drought emergency, and asking its 26 member
water agencies to consider implementing mandatory water
conservation measures, in early December.

Though a majority of California’s electricity is still generated
using natural gas, according to the state’s Energy Commission,
about 10.2% of all California electricity is created with
hydropower. The state’s shrinking water supply, though, has
forced an even heavier reliance on natural gas for electricity
production in recent years.

“We’ve seen a lot of reservoirs and dams that produce
hydroelectricity struggling because of the drought,” said Long
Beach Utilities spokesperson Lauren Gold Howland on Thursday.
“There’s been more natural gas used to create electricity
because of that.”

And because 90% of California’s natural gas supply is imported —
largely from West Texas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Four
Corners area — the state relies heavily on the health of a vast
interstate of transport pipelines to receive its share of the
supply.

Long Beach is slightly insulated from that issue with a few
local natural gas suppliers, Gold Howland said, but those
sources only account for a mere fraction of what’s needed to
serve the whole city.

Capacity along that crucial interstate pipeline has suffered in
recent months, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA), as wholesale suppliers in West Texas, one
of California’s main importers, have dealt with a series of
maintenance issues.

A fire last June at Freeport LNG — one of Texas’ major liquified
natural gas exports terminals — shut down that hub’s operations.
Officials there have set, and then pushed back, a full
reopening several times. The company most recently estimated a
March 2023 operational restart.

And several other pipelines were shut down to undergo
maintenance for normal wear and tear, according to Gold Howland.

“That makes a big difference on how much gas can be coming into
the state,” she said.

Natural gas storage capacity in California’s underground
reservoirs — three of which are in the Los Angeles area — has
also been greatly reduced in recent years.

That’s partially due to the consequences of the massive natural
gas leak at the Aliso Canyon storage facility in 2015, the
biggest natural gas leak in U.S. history.

The Aliso Canyon facility shut down completely following the
2015 incident that released about 100,000 tons of methane and
other chemicals into the air, and resulted in hundreds of
lawsuits that cascaded into a $1.8 billion accord in 2021.
SoCalGas and Sempra Energy agreed to settle claims filed by more
than 35,000 victims.

Two years later, the California Public Utilities Commission and
Department of Conservation reopened the facility at greatly
reduced capacity.

“The issue there is still kind of a residual impact from the
leaks that they had a few years back,” Gold Howland said. “It
took a toll on the storage fields — and they’re trying to
recover, basically.”

But the problem isn’t limited to Aliso Canyon or Southern
California.

Natural gas levels in storage facilities across the Pacific
Region — which includes California, Washington state, and Oregon
— were 25% lower in December than a year earlier, according to
the EIA, and 30% below the five-year average. “In Northern
California, Pacific Gas and Electric’s injections, to rebuild
natural gas inventories, have not kept pace with previous
summers,” the EIA added.

SoCalGas and Long Beach Utilities, meanwhile, assured consumers
that the bill increases won’t spike their own profits — and
offered a series of tips to help consumers prepare for the
inflated January bills.

Both companies advised natural gas users to lower their
thermostats three to five degrees — which can result in up to a
10% reduction in heating costs. Washing clothes in cold water,
limiting hot showers, turning down the temperature on your water
heater, and limiting use of non-essential natural gas appliances
may also help slightly.

“Resources are available to help customers manage higher bills,
including payment plan options and reduced rates for seniors,
those with disabilities and other income-qualified customers,”
Long Beach Utilities said. Information about those programs is
available on that department’s website.

SoCalGas also has a number of financial assistance programs to
help customers who qualify manage higher bills — which include
past due bill forgiveness, bill discounts, and free energy
efficiency home improvements through its Energy Savings
Assistance Program. More information on those programs are also
available on the company’s website.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

<https://www.ocregister.com/2023/01/06/your-natural-gas-bills-to- jump-shockingly-high-across-region-socalgas-warns/>

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