Bellevue, WA-based Puget Energy’s utility said Friday it reached a natural gas general rate settlement for an increase in retail rates, but reduced wholesale supply costs will offset the increase, resulting in small, but still-undetermined retail rate decrease Sept. 1, according to a company announcement on the settlement with the state of Washington regulatory commission staff, state attorney general’s office and large industrial customers.

Puget Sound Energy, the utility, filed Friday with the Washington (state) Utilities and Transportation Commission for a gas general rate case estimated to be about $35.6 million, or 5.8%, annually, and it will file next week for a purchased gas adjustment (PGA) rate decrease that a spokesperson said the utility is “confident will exceed” the settled increase.

“We are grateful for the productive contributions of all the parties to this case,” Puget Energy CEO Stephen Reynolds said. He noted the collaborative settlement filed with state regulators “marks the second phase of the comprehensive, multi-party process for reviewing (the Puget utility’s) rates and service.” In the first phase, Puget’s utility was granted a 4.6% increase in its retail electric rates, what the company called “one of the region’s lowest increases” following last year’s wholesale electric price spikes.

A PGA cost-of-gas decrease of 22% was authorized for Puget last June. Among the state of Washington’s four major natural gas providers, Puget Sound Energy has the lowest retail rates, the company said in its announcement of the settlement.

From a financial standpoint, Reynolds said the revenue increase agreed to in the settlement was less than what the company originally asked for, but that was due primarily because of “lower capital costs, changes in how certain utility operating costs are allocated between electric and gas service, and adjustments in revenue to more appropriately recover certain utility costs.”

Puget Sound Energy serves more than 600,000 gas customers in central and southern Puget Sound, including Seattle and Olympia, WA, and it serves more than 1 million electric customers in that same region, excluding Seattle.

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