Essay by Eric Worrall
As energy prices in coal states remain steady, California is continuing its green energy revolution plan to bankrupt residents with out of control price rises.
SoCalGas January Bills are Likely to Be Shockingly High. Here’s What to Know
Check your January SoCalGas bill: the company made the announcement right before the New Year, and customers should be seeing the surge right about now.
By Heather Navarro • Published January 6, 2023 • Updated on January 6, 2023 at 11:49 pm
Bad news, natural gas users — so basically everyone: SoCalGas announced gas bills would be more than double, going up 128% from December to January.
…
Why is my SoCalGas bill so high?
SoCalGas said the reason behind the bills — which for one NBCLA digital producer went from $27 to $118 — is the unprecedented cold snap that drove up natural gas prices in the western region.
SoCalGas also shared examples of bills customers might see.
Residential peak bill last winter Peak bill this winter $65 $160 $130 $315 “We understand that our customers are starting to feel the pain caused by large changes in the natural gas market,” SoCalGas Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Gillian Wright said. “And we also recognize that we owe it to our customers to provide them with as many tools and tips as possible to help them find ways to prepare for colder weather and higher winter bills, including financial assistance in some cases.”
…
Read more: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/socalgas-january-bill-shockingly-high-heres-what-to-know/3068590/
Last September, ABC reported one in four SoCal customers can’t pay their energy bills.
More than one in four SoCal families are unable to pay energy bills. Heat waves may make it worse
During the early September heat wave, SoCal electricity prices rose to more than double prices in August, federal numbers show.
By Christiane Cordero and Grace Manthey
Wednesday, September 28, 2022LOS ANGELES (KABC) — With temperatures climbing yet again this week, the power grid isn’t the only thing strained.
According to an ABC7 analysis of the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, more than a third of families in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties had to reduce basic necessities, such as food or medicine, to pay an energy bill.
More than a quarter were unable to pay their energy bills in full at least once in the last year, and 24% kept their home at what they felt was an unhealthy or unsafe temperature.
…
Read more: https://abc7.com/how-do-i-get-help-with-my-utility-bill-much-power-costs-increase-during-heat-waves-many-people-are-struggling-to-pay-their-electric-bills/12272588/
Back in 2021, California Governor Newsom announced a fracking ban by 2024 and an end to oil extraction by 2045. Even though these bans have not yet come into force, Newsom is not exactly laying out the welcome mat to new fossil fuel investment.
Remember back when California was the land of opportunity? Who in their right mind would set up an energy intensive business in California today?
All this pain is self inflicted. All Californians have to do to end the pain is vote for candidates who support energy sanity, welcome back fossil fuel extraction, and bring down energy prices.
All this pain is self inflicted. All Californians have to do to end the pain is vote….
_________________________________________________________________
And hope their vote isn’t in some way compromised.
The smart ones moved out. Dumb voters and public union zombies are all that’s left.
Cali is a lost cause.
Joel,
Be cautious that the spread of LMV doesn’t contribute to election Californification in Arizona! The Zombie Hordes were able to change Orange County from a purple to a completely red area in only one election cycle without anyone seeing it coming.
I understand that they are already widespread in Maricopa County, too!
Four counties in California out of 58 determine all the state wide races and initiatives for the whole state. Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernadino and San Diego. It’s where the vast majority of all democrat voters live, all in Southern California. Orange county is large too, but voters there tend to cancel each other out. The rest of California could all stay home on election day and it wouldn’t affect the outcome.
Joe Biden has a solution in the works. Soon you won’t have to worry about your gas bill because you won’t be allowed to have gas appliances..
https://nypost.com/2023/01/09/biden-administration-reportedly-weighing-national-ban-on-gas-stoves/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
One can just as easily substitute Australia for California … there’s no accounting for stupidity in voting in these fascist frauds and then complaining … that’s what you voted for!
Australia, like Cali, was afflicted with the Liberal Moron Virus (LMV) some years ago. LMV ate right thru the prefrontal cortex that virus did. Then leaving a swath of Zombie voters in its wake, all wanting a hand-out of free stuff.
Hollyweird producers should do a remake of Romero’s classic horror flick. They can call it “Vote of the Living Dead!” They should make stars out of the leaders of the state’s prison guard and teacher’s unions for leading the zombie hordes, streaming from LA, SF and Sacramento; feasting on the brains of the living!
“zombie voters” — I like that…
With respect, I think that should be LIV, or Liberal Idiot Virus, since “moron” is giving them too much credit.
Possibly. The inverse progression is: morons, imbeciles, idiots. The terms were introduced by a couple of French psychologists.
morons_imbeciles_idiots.pdf (campbellmgold.co.uk)
You could also, almost, add the UK, but here there are no candidates supporting energy sanity. Finis!
The Reform Party are attempting to.
Streetcred,
Or New Zealand with the greens dictating to Ardern the quickest way to wreck our countries economy .
This anti energy disease is spreading faster than covid and is doing immense harm to many countries .
The high energy prices might make those who support this green madness to think again .
We can only hope that enough people will see the futility of high energy prices and vote this green tainted government out .
My Arizona nat gas prices are down right now = lower heating costs.
So…. Cranking up the home thermostat NOW, via my iPhone app. All while I’m 800 miles away in Texas. Gaia needs the CO2.
Enjoy the suck California.
You mean there was an actual alternative choice somewhere in the herd? Hard to believe!
Shouldn’t be advertising that you’re not at home…
Gas Shock
Know the feeling
My prayers go out to all Commiefornians living in the High Sierras, where NWS Winter Storm and Avalanche Warnings are in effect until Wednesday morning! I hope they can afford their natural gas and propane bills, and that there aren’t too many electrical black outs; but virtue signaling doesn’t come cheap, you know!
Death toll from powerful California storm reaches 14, Montecito home of Prince Harry and Meghan is ordered to evacuate – and Ellen DeGeneres blames climate change saying ‘we need to be nicer to Mother Nature’ – Daily Mail
So there you have it, be nice…
Well, that’s what happens when you would rather believe people like EDG and the V-P of an electrical supplier rather than a qualified experienced (and honest) Engineer. Plenty of those to be found here on WUWT!
A lot of, if not most states require state regulatory approval for any utility price hikes to customers. There should never be such massive spikes. The utilities need to purchase gas under long term contracts to avoid the need to participate in extremely volatile spot markets. This is just bad state regulatory management and bad business management by the utilities.
Most of us were under the impression that Dem controlled California would be over regulated, not underregulated. This is weird.
It IS overregulated. It’s just that the focus of the “overregulation” is to force reductions in fossil fuel use at every turn.
There are usually fuel cost adjustments which are add-ons to the basic rates. Also, the bill reflects gas or electric consumption; when consumption rises, the cost per unit need not rise much or at all to see a very high bill.
Duane seems to believe that the utilities should have been able to predict years ago, when the long term contracts were signed, that this winter was going to be harsh and negotiated at that time, to buy more gas during the storm.
He also seems to feel that if only there were more regulations, company administrators would become psychic and be able to see the future perfectly.
In one hand he wants to see long range planning; in the other hand he says the Keystone shutdown (& biden) does not have the capacity to change anything.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, there is something going on that makes it so he doesn’t really know what he is saying.
The problem is that he assumes that without government intervention, no company does long range planning.
1) Bad regulatory management is not the same as no regulatory management.
It takes a really odd person to believe that the answer to bad regulations is more regulations.
2) I’m sure the companies that you are so eager to condemn are buying gas using long term contracts. The problem with long term contracts is that you can only buy what you normally use. You can’t predict a year or two in advance that there will be an unusually harsh winter. Also storing large quantities of gas costs money.
California has enough natural gas to supply itself for 100 years. The supply is regulated by democrats who will not allow drilling or import pipelines from Texas, which along with its cap and trade tax keep prices high.
They’ve lost their minds. The purpose of government control of energy used to be to keep the costs low to consumers while allowing development dollars to flow. The preponderance of evidence is that energy poverty and financial poverty go hand in hand. Finding ways to reduce the cost of energy you consume is one thing, and being restricted in how much energy is available is another…..
Cali is getting what they have voted for. The fact that what they voted for is probably not what they wanted is a result of the leaders lying to them and the voters failing to notice or care. Government control of energy now serves a completely different purpose and the voters have approved that.
I’m not sure there is any legitimate purpose to the government control of energy. They can take their royalties and well-head fees, but that should be it.
The prices in CA got high before the cold.
I think this price surge was mostly caused by simple incompetence. PG&E started a request to reduce their gas storage rating for one large facility a few years ago. It was approved last year. This is the first heating season showing how the system works with less storage.
The balance of CA gas is imported. The combination of imports and storage meet demand. Removing storage without increasing supply, imports, or reducing demand causes prices to get wacky.
https://www.pge.com/pipeline/news/newsdetails/index.page?title=20210610_2445_news
The kicker: the gas is still there in the storage facility. The only barrier to using it is paperwork. It has just been relabeled from “working” to “cushion.” If anyone cared, they could have this fixed by tomorrow morning.
Eric,
You missed a trick. Utilities blamed high prices on both hot and cold spells.
As for voting: this is sadly nonsense.
As Thiel very astutely notes: the tech industry has turned California into the equivalent of a petro-state – only with surveillance capital money instead of oil. This money underlies both Google/Facebook as well as Disney/CNN/Hollywood, and the people whose rice bowls depend on it vastly outnumber the farmers, ranchers and regular people away from the 2 metro areas of SF and LA.
But the good news is that the dominance of tech and entertainment liberals will never transplant into the US as a whole but their vast sums of money will continue to lead the Democrat party into dead ends.
The problem is, Newsom doesn’t care how the people vote. California’s a state that overrules the people’s Propositions.
I’m having some trouble interpreting the SoCal residential rates published here. I don’t see any option for fixed rate plans such as we have in Georgia; rather rates are adjusted monthly. The published rate has two components: a procurement cost and a transportation cost. For December 2022 those were $0.105329 and $0.082487 per therm respectively (Residential Individually metered “baseline”). For January 2023 those had risen to $3.44892 and $0.090246. There are also “non-baseline” rates which have the same procurement costs but about 50% higher transportation cost. Anyway the effective total rate for January is $4.35138 per therm, which is a 131.7% increase from December.
This appears to be a seasonal spike and prices should drop as demand slackens, which doesn’t help people who necessarily use the most gas during the coldest conditions. However the longer term graph does not show similar spikes in previous years, so there are one or more unique factors behind this rise.
My rates in Georgia will go up about 30% when my current fixed-rate plan at $0.5990 / therm expires next billing cycle. Best new rates with my current provider are for 18 and 36-month plans at $0.7790 / therm.
To add insult to usury the gouging is only happening in California. Electricity and gas providers claim “a perfect storm” of incidents is the cause yet nothing has changed except state government policies.
Another poverty success story
Who in their right mind would set up any form of business in California?
A bill currently being debated in Sacramento gives the government a seat at any negotiations between businesses and unions.
First off, there is no role for government in such negotiations.
Secondly, you know the socialists who run the government in that state will use these new powers to ensure that businesses are forced to give the unions whatever they want.
Something is fishy here. Supposedly California and Oregon get their Nat Gas from the same sources. My cost per BTU for Nat Gas hasn’t changed in 15 years! (except downward a couple of times)