Connecticut regulators last week issued a draft decision thattakes a mid-course review of commercial and industrial natural gasunbundling in an effort to fine-tune the state’s two-year-oldprogram. The draft also was seen as a “first step” towards possiblyachieving customer choice in the state’s residential gas marketdown the road.

“As you can see, we needed to fine-tune [commercial andindustrial unbundling] a lot. I mean there are a lot of customersusing it. There’s no question about that. But there have been acouple of glitches…people who’ve been left short,” said BerylLyons, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Department of PublicUtility Control (PUC).

In the Phase I draft, state regulators and market participantsrevisited a number of issues, including the need for shorter, lesscomplex transportation agreements between LDCs and gas suppliers;the need for simplified and uniform tariffs; firm transportationrate design; nomination procedures for gas deliveries; balancingand capacity release. The draft ruling is expected to become finalon July 22.

The commission then plans to apply the revisions to the state’sthree LDCs – Connecticut Natural Gas, Southern Connecticut Gas andYankee Gas Services, which combined serve about 476,000 gascustomers in the state. “We would open up each of the three gascompanies prior rate cases to put into effect the mid-coursecorrections that are discussed in the draft,” noted Lyons. Thiswill be followed by the commission undertaking Phase II of thereview, where it will decide the fate of customer choice forresidential gas users.

At this stage, “we don’t know if there’s going to be residentialunbundling” in Connecticut, a state with a large poor population,Lyons told NGI. “Most of our suburbs don’t have gas services. Gasis mainly in the inner cities,” she noted, adding that the state’sdecision on whether to go ahead with residential unbundling willinvolve “a lot of social considerations” as a result. “You’ve gotone company here whose uncollectibles are just unbelievable. Theyserve the two poorest cities in the state,” she said.

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