To the editor:
The price of natural gas has tripled over the last two years, including the surcharge for the February 2021 weather event, which put 2 million Texans out of power for a few weeks. The cost of distribution also increased by about $4 per house by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. At the PUC hearing in Mankato on Feb. 24, Center Point Energy officials lied when they said it would not go to profit. The final report indicated the whole increase was to raise the baseline for profit. That is not the purpose of the PUC.
The weather event that caused so much disruption in the supply was caused by many problems in six areas, all in two days, according to Rice University Research. They had satisfied higher peak demands both the summer and winter before without a shortage of power. But since they forgot to send power to the gas pumping stations that pump natural gas to the power plants, and even found a way to not get enough power to the power plants, they shut down 40 percent of the power capacity. If they had only dropped 20 percent of capacity, they would have had enough power for everyone. Now we get huge increases in our natural gas bills.
We were told our gas price would go up a little bit for 15 years rather than a huge jump. Last summer, they raised it 35 percent when we were not using our furnaces. They raised it a lot again in the fall and added a line — “February 2021 weather event” — to our bill.
Roger Elgersma
Pipestone
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