Reading your natural gas bill. Or, playing monopoly

How much more confusing can they make this thing? First one will note that there is a lot of industry jargon mixed in with a few things we consumers might actually understand...like tax.

My gas bill from our monopoly gas provider, Atmos Energy, has no fewer than 10 line items that make up my April bill. So, after reading all the fine print on the back under the heading "understanding your bill" I called the gas company. It turns out their representative had a lot of problems with "understanding my bill".

Maybe before we move on I should discuss why we should care. If we as consumers are responsible for reducing our carbon footprint, or our overall energy use etc, its helpful to know what we are being charged and why. If the charges are directly tied to gas use, then I can count on a savings for those line items and portion of that total when I conserve. If I want to understand the return on a conservation effort, I need to know how that will effect my bill.

For example - if I put in solar hot water, but I still have to have an account with Atmos for cooking, then what will I still pay in fixed fees?

So back to the bill.

The first item is a fixed fee, it's called the Customer Charge. $14.47. You are going to pay this no matter how much you conserve. Its what you pay for the administration of your Atmos account.

Next is a Rider WNA, that is an extra fee or credit, calculated on the number of days above or below average temperatures. Why or how that is calculated is unclear and the Atmos person has escalated the question. I received a credit of 1.74 this month and a charge of 1.33 last month???? Basically your bill is based partially on how weird the weather is.

Next is a Consumption Charge. But its not really. It's really a delivery charge. It's what we pay to have the gas delivered, not what we pay for gas. But it is based on the amount you use.

Next is the Rider GCR - GCR stands for Gas Cost Recovery charge. Believe it or not, this IS the price of the gas you used. Why the silly labeling? Well technically it's because the gas company doesn't mark-up the gas we buy. We pay whatever their cost is. They make their money on all the fees etc.

You will note that this multiplier is the cost per therm which extrapolates into MCF or thousand cubic feet. This amount will change every month depending on what Atmos paid in the market for the gas. So unlike your electricity bill, this "cost" is all over the map. Atmos doesn't appear to have long term contracts for supply or storage sufficient to provide less volatile pricing. Who knew?

Next is a GUD 9530 refund. (37 cents in my case) GUD means Gas Utility Docket. There are no explanations yet for this other than it is somehow calculated on the amount of gas you use and the temperature? Crazy. (Updated above)

Then a Rider Surcharge, this is what we are charged to cover Atmos expenses for requesting rate changes. It's fixed at 25 cents.

Now we have taxes, the first is a Franchise Fee charged by the city for use of streets and right of ways. Next a City Sales Tax. (the only obvious one) and a simple thing called Rider Tax. This is unknown yet. But all three of these are based on your total bill. If you save gas, you save taxes.

Lastly, in April only, there is a Pipeline Safety Fee. We pay this once a year so the Railroad Commission can protect us consumers from large gas explosions by maintaining the system better. The only scary part is it's a 49 cent fixed fee. How safe can a pipeline be for that?

In the end it appears that $14.96 is fixed every month. In April that charge was almost 27% of my bill and you cant affect that amount through any conservation.

It's also interesting to note that natural Gas hit a high of $2.07 per therm last July. This month I paid 61 cents a therm. That's a more than three fold drop in price in less than a year! We Texans generally do better on price than the national average, and I am sure you know why.

Bottom Line - The gas bill is almost indecipherable, but with the above information you should be able to track your actual gas usage and see the results of any conservation efforts. This is mostly the effect of regulating a monopoly. Next we will review electricity and deregulation.