For the third time in four years, Idaho regulators Tuesday lowered the commodity price part of Intermountain Gas Co.’s retail natural gas utility rates, and later the same day reported that they had received a third gas rate decrease request from Spokane, WA-based Avista Utilities.

For Intermountain, the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) authorized decreases of more than 20% in the purchased gas adjustment (PGA) portion of the utility’s rates for residential (22.2% drop) and commercial (21.6%) customers, effective Thursday. Separately, the PUC said it would take comments through Oct. 16 on Avista’s latest request to drop its retail residential gas rates by 17.8% as part of the combination utility’s PGA.

Idaho regulators attributed two major factors to the continued steep gas decreases — what they called “current supply-demand imbalance for natural gas, which has driven down prices,” and Intermountain Gas’s “dynamic hedging and effective management” of its natural gas storage. Intermountain serves 305,000 customers across southern Idaho.

For the average Intermountain residential customer using gas for space and water heating, the monthly reductions will average about $16.23, the PUC said. Those customers will get a per-therm decrease from $1.05 to 80.9 cents. Heating-only customers will get a monthly decrease averaging $11.27 and its per-therm rate goes from $1.02 to 77.5 cents.

In this PGA adjustment, the weighted average cost of gas is dropping from 67.5 cents/th to 49.6 cents/th. The overall PGA for the Boise-based gas utility included a combination of both increases and decreases that netted out to the more than 20% rate drops, the PUC said. Intermountain had to pay higher costs to Northwest Pipeline Co. and its Canadian suppliers, but these increases were more than offset cumulatively by declines in the amount of gas transported, projected storage contract costs and firm transportation/storage costs.

In Avista’s PGA filing, the utility is asking to drop its annual gas utility revenues in Idaho by $14.7 million, translating into an average $12.74 decrease in monthly bills for the typical customer. Large commercial/industrial customers would get a 20% decrease.

With this proposed decrease, Avista gas rates in Idaho will drop by 25% this year, the PUC said. The regulators said they will use what they call a “modified procedure” using written comments rather than conducting a hearing to process the proposed rate change. If customer comments demonstrate a need for a formal hearing, the PUC will schedule one later.

The PUC did not identify a target date for making the Avista rate decrease effective.

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