Just in time for the winter heating season, Philadelphia Gas Works announced Monday it will decrease natural gas rates for the next three months, saving the average residential heating customer about $14.69 per month.
The municipal gas utility will lower its residential gas-supply charge from $1.60 per hundred cubic feet to $1.50 on Wednesday. The charge for commercial and institutional customers will also be reduced.
The supply charge is adjusted quarterly to reflect changes in the wholesale market price of natural gas, which is depressed because of the recession and abundant supplies from new resources such as shale-gas.
Based upon current market projections, the company anticipates that its rates should remain stable through the spring.
Citing falling market prices and a growing supply, UGI Gas Utilities said Tuesday that it will decrease the rate it charges for natural gas by 8.1 percent beginning today.
UGI provides natural gas to 82,000 customers in the greater Reading area.
In addition, the utility owns UGI Central Penn Gas, which has several hundred customers in Hamburg and Shoemakersville, and in Centre, Perry, Tilden and Windsor townships. The rate for those customers will drop by 10.7 percent beginning today.
The average monthly bill for a UGI customer will drop to $103.60 from $112.76, officials said.
Central Penn monthly bills will drop to $83.01 from $92.92, they said.
Since 2008, UGI customers’ rates have fallen 30 percent and Central Penn customers’ bills have dropped 35 percent, company spokesman Joseph Swope said.
By 2018, Swope said, the Marcellus shale will be producing 4.6 billion cubic feet per day, or 40 percent of all natural gas currently used in the Northeast.
U.S. natural gas reserves increased by the most in history last year, and crude reserves also rose, as companies drilled frantically into shale rock formations with new technology, the Energy Information Administration said in an annual report on Tuesday.
U.S. net proved natural gas reserves rose 11 percent, or 28.8 trillion cubic feet (tcf), in 2009 to total 284 tcf, underscoring the dramatic impact that new gas pumped from shale rock formations is having on world energy supply.
“These increases demonstrate the possibility of an expanding role for domestic natural gas and crude oil in meeting both current and projected U.S. energy demands,” EIA researchers said in their report.
Proved reserves — which now stand at the equivalent of 12 years of gas consumption and 3.3 years of oil demand — represent energy supplies that are extensively charted out and could be tapped under current market conditions. Total recoverable reserves, however, can be far higher.