The five big regional utilities that serve Pennsylvania and New Jersey customers have reduced their prices on the gas portion of bills by amounts ranging from 37 percent to 52 percent since Dec. 1, 2008, reflecting the steady fall in market prices that experts attribute to new supplies of shale gas.
For the 500,000 customers of Philadelphia Gas Works, the cost of gas has decreased by more than half since December 2008, from $1.27 per hundred cubic feet (ccf) to 61 cents.
What's that mean to a typical PGW customer who uses 900 ccf of natural gas a year? Annual savings of $594.
That price only reflects the commodity charge in the bill, which utilities change periodically to respond to market fluctuations. Utilities aren't allowed to mark up the price, so it should reflect what they actually pay for the fuel.
The other part of the bill is the delivery charge, or base rate, which covers the costs for customer service, billing, maintenance of the distribution system and profit.
Typically the delivery charge is the smaller part of the bill. But the cost of the natural gas has decreased so much in three years that the commodity now makes up only 40 percent of PGW's total rate, down from 61 percent in 2008.
Including both the gas cost and the delivery charge, PGW now charges 55 cents less per ccf than it charged in 2008. That translates into $495 in annual savings, per household.
Other utilities in the region report similar numbers. A Peco Energy Co. customer is paying about $350 less a year for gas. Public Service Electric & Gas Co. in New Jersey says a winter monthly bill for a typical customer is down 34 percent from 2008.
