CITY GAS HIKE

CITY GAS HIKE
Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The Spirit of Texoma

You are seeing price hikes at the pump, but what about your natural gas bills at home? Now, Atmos Energy wants you to foot the bill for company improvements. Atmos Energy Corporation is asking the city for something called an annual gas reliability infrastructure program or GRIP. Basically, a monthly surcharge for customers. It is not a lot of money, but as you can imagine, local Atmos consumers are not excited about any rate increase, no matter how modest.

With this vote, the Council moved to suspend or put off action on Atmos Energy`s request for more money monthly. Atmos says they need the surcharge to help pay for improvements they have already made to get your gas to you. The proposed rate increases would be tacked onto consumers monthly statements. On this scale all residential customers would pay an additional 51 cents per month. Commercial clients would owe the company an additional $1.75 and those in industrial business would pay $78.47 more each month. Consumers hope these proposed dollar signs don`t land on their monthly statements. This is the second time Atmos has asked the city to hike rates for residents in the last six months. The city will continue to review the proposed surcharges. Within the next month or so, the issue will come back to Councilors for their approval or rejection.