| If you purchase natural gas from Allegheny Power - brace yourself for another
rate hike. This one smaller than the one that went into effect last fall.
If you are a customer, you are already paying 35% more for gas than you did a
year ago.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission will have two days of formal
hearings into the purchased gas costs of Allegheny subsidiary Mountaineer
Gas.
The company is now asking for a 20-cent per MCF [thousand cubic feet] increase,
or $2.60 a month more for the average customer.
Allegheny first asked for a 40 percent increase in rates, which would have raised
the typical monthly bill from $107.14 to nearly $150. It agreed instead to an
interim increase of 31.9 percent that went into effect in October. Average
monthly bills rose to $137.84.
The open market price of gas has continued to rise. Allegheny recently told the
PSC that its rates ought to be about 3 percent higher than the interim October
rates.
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