With wholesale gas costs plummeting, Dominion East Ohio Gas said its customers will pay 25% less for gas in November, December and January than they paid during the same months a year earlier. Under a gas cost recovery (GCR) decrease filed last Wednesday with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), Dominion East Ohio sales customers, starting Oct. 26, will pay $5.38/Mcf, down 12.8% from the current $6.17/Mcf and down 25% from the $7.18/Mcf they paid during the third quarter last year.

Columbia Gas of Ohio also said its customers should see reduced rates this winter. The company said beginning in November and through January billings, Columbia will reduce its gas cost to $0.48 per 100 cf — a drop of 20% over last year. At the new lower cost, the monthly bill for the average residential customer using 14,800 cf of gas a month is estimated to be $106, about $40 less than last winter, said the company.

Columbia’s costs are adjusted on a quarterly basis to reflect the price the company pays for gas, which is passed on to the customers without any markup. The cut in gas prices are the second for Columbia Gas in just a few weeks. In August, the company reduced its gas cost to 60 cents per 100 cubic feet from 87 cents, a drop of about 32%.

Including its most recent filing, Dominion East Ohio said it has reduced its GCR by 38.1% since prices peaked at the historically high level of $8.70/Mcf in February. Nationally, an increase in drilling for new gas supplies, coupled with an economic slowdown, has resulted in sharply lower market prices. Dominion’s gas cost reduction will affect 640,000 Dominion East Ohio customers who buy natural gas from the company at rates regulated by the PUCO.

About 550,000 Dominion East Ohio customers, or 46% of its 1.2 million customers, buy gas from competitive suppliers at market-based rates through the Energy Choice program. Dominion East said Energy Choice customers, regardless of supplier, would see the unrecovered gas cost portion of their transportation charge fall from 47.5 cents/Mcf to 27.5 cents/Mcf. The unrecovered gas cost portion of the transportation charge reimburses Dominion East Ohio for costs incurred in buying gas for customers before they joined the Energy Choice program.

©Copyright 2001 Intelligence Press Inc. Allrights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republishedor redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without priorwritten consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.