SoCal Gas says residential bills will continue to drop

Southern California Gas Co. today announced that average residential bills will decrease about 67% in March compared to January -- the result of wholesale market prices for natural gas dropping for a second straight month.

"SoCalGas estimates that average residential bills will drop from $300 for January usage to an estimated $100 for March usage," the utility said in a statement.

The company noted that an 83% drop in March's "procurement rate," compared to January's high, drove the expected decrease in March customer bills.

"We're pleased that we're seeing what appears to be a trend to natural gas prices that are more in line with last year," SoCalGas Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Gillian Wright said in a statement.

Natural gas prices are determined by wholesale national and regional markets, from which SoCalGas and other utilities make purchases. The cost of buying that gas is billed to customers with no markup, according to SoCalGas.

A late-December cold snap across the country was one factor that drove natural gas market prices in the West to increase by some 128% between December and January -- leading SoCalGas to warn residential customers in a Dec. 29 statement that "January bills are likely to be shockingly high."

Other factors contributing to the spike in prices, according to

SoCalGas, were:

   -- widespread, below-normal temperatures on much of the West Coast;

   -- high natural gas demand for heating by customers in areas with

below normal temperatures;

   -- reduced natural gas supplies to the West Coast from Canada;

   -- reduced interstate pipeline capacity to the West Coast because of pipeline maintenance activities in West Texas

   -- low natural gas storage levels on the West Coast.

On Monday, SoCalGas announced the availability of $10 million in funding to help customers pay their bills. The company said it committed $5 million in funding to the Gas Assistance Fund, a program administered by the United Way that provides income-qualified customers with one-time grants to help pay their natural gas bills.

SoCalGas also announced it will contribute $4 million to relaunch its popular Fueling Our Communities program, a collaboration with local food banks and nonprofits that has provided free meals and groceries to thousands of Californians facing food insecurity since 2020.

In addition, SoCalGas said it will contribute $1 million in aid to small restaurant owners through the Restaurants Care Resilience Fund, a fund that was started in 2021 to help small restaurants with improvements, employee retention and to manage debt and rising costs.