As the prompt month settlement price for natural gas reached a record level this week at $9.984/Mcf, the head of a municipal gas distribution group on Thursday called on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to immediately turn its attention to escalating natural gas prices when it returns from its August recess after Labor Day.

The Washington, DC-based American Public Gas Association (APGA) wants Congress to move quickly to enact a stand-alone consumer-based natural gas bill that would increase access to domestic gas supplies, accommodate reasonable growth of liquefied natural gas; and significantly accelerate the development of technology that would bring methane hydrates into the domestic gas supply mix.

While the recently enacted energy bill includes several provisions favorable to natural gas, “it is the position of APGA…that this energy bill is just the first step in regards to natural gas and any relief for the consumers we serve is years away,” said APGA President Bert Kalisch in a letter to Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM). “Much more work… must be done to bring natural gas prices back down to an affordable level.”

American consumers in the past five years have seen the price of natural gas more than triple, costing them over $200 billion more than in the prior five-year period, the APGA said. “We have the highest natural gas prices of any industrialized country in the world. These prices had a direct impact on the loss of 2.5 million manufacturing jobs,” Kalisch noted.

The Energy Information Administration recently projected that residential natural gas prices will average $12.19/Mcf this winter, according to APGA. “When the bills reflecting these current gas prices are received this winter by homeowners across America, I expect the fallout will extend far beyond the local communities we serve,” he said.

APGA’s members include 607 publicly owned gas systems and municipal distributors in 36 states.

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