If you’re a Roanoke Gas customer, get ready to see next month’s bill go up by a large amount.
Roanoke Gas president and CEO Paul Nester said customers can expect a 17 percent increase on their bill during the next two years, which is about a $15 increase on the average bill. Nester said that’s because price of gas suddenly skyrocketed by 68 percent in the last week.
The company is attributing the spike to winter weather over the past several weeks that impacted natural gas supply and market pricing throughout the country. Nester said Roanoke Gas gets all of their gas through pipelines from the Gulf Coast and Midwest, two areas drastically affected by the storms.
“Since the shale revolution began in 2010, we have never seen supply constraints and price spikes like we have seen over the Valentine’s Day weekend,” Nester said. “Certainly, our customers have not experienced anything like this in the past 10 years.”
According to a release sent out by the company, gas for the time period of Feb. 13 to Feb. 20 was about $3 million. In context, the company’s gas purchases for 2020 totaled $14.9 million.
Below is a statement from Nester:
“Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those in Texas and the many others throughout the country impacted by this storm.” Regarding the 68% jump in gas prices effective March 1 for Roanoke Gas customers, Nester stated, “We have worked diligently to moderate the impact to our customers. However, it may take up to 2 years for these costs to be fully recovered.” Nester further commented regarding the Company’s gas supply portfolio, “This is a real-time, real-world example of the need for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (“MVP”) and the gas it will supply our customers and others throughout the United States. If the MVP had been in service, we believe we would have saved our customers significant commodity gas costs by delivering gas from the prolific and affordable Appalachian Basin. On the critical Valentine’s Day weekend, the MVP pricing point was consistently in the $4.00 per DTH range. As these numbers indicate, the flexibility and supply diversity that MVP would have provided are material. This event has proven how much this region, our state and country need the MVP.”
Paul Nester, Roanoke Gas president and CEO