Citing a nearly four-year crisis in the natural gas market, a group of major industrial consumers on Thursday turned to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for help in ending the runaway gas prices.

In a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt, the Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) urged the agency to make it final action on the proposed Interstate Quality Rule and Mercury (MACT) “natural gas-neutral” in order to “not directly or indirectly increase the demand for natural gas.”

Energy consumers “have paid dearly as a result of the significant increased consumption of natural gas for power generation by electric utilities,” the IECA said in its brief letter, which was supported by 18 other gas-consuming groups. In the past decade, gas demand by the power utility sector rose 60.5% and accounted for more than 90% of the nation’s overall increase in gas demand, it noted.

The IECA called on the EPA to conduct a study on the impact of the proposed air quality rule on the demand and price for natural gas. It also requested a meeting with Leavitt to discuss the issue.

“The 46-month natural gas crisis has cost U.S. manufacturers, farmers and homeowners more than $130 billion and there is no relief in sight,” the group told Leavitt. “This cost does not include the impact of higher electricity prices, lost economic growth and the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.”

The IECA acknowledged that “flat” production also is to blame for the high gas prices, but it sees the primary culprit being the high demand of the power sector. “The electric utility industry has alternative energy sources to produce power while industrial consumers, farmers and homeowners do not,” it said.

Citing Energy Information Administration statistics, the group noted that domestic gas consumption rose 11% from 1992 to 2002 by 2.227 Bcf/d. For the same period, the gas consumption of the power utility industry jumped by 2.085 Bcf/d (60.5%), which was 93.6% of the entire U.S. net increase. The EIA forecasts a continuation of this trend that “will have disastrous economic consequences for consumers,” the IECA said.

“Accommodating progress in clean air quality while not putting additional pressure on natural gas is critical.”

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