Wisconsin Average gas customer's heating bill expected to top $900

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Average gas customer's heating bill expected to top $900

(Published Thursday, December 07, 2000 8:28:17 AM CST)

Associated Press

Heating bills for Wisconsin residents will be even higher than had been predicted this winter, sending the average residential customer's bill up by $283 to $340 over last winter, utility officials say.

Wisconsin Gas Co. and Wisconsin Electric Power Co. blamed soaring gas futures prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the revised forecast Wednesday.

Instead of facing a 40 percent increase, the average resident who paid $567 for the six-month period from November 1999 through last April can expect to pay 50 percent to 60 percent more, or from $850 to $907, the utilities said.

They also said the supply of natural gas would not be a problem, despite the fact that national inventories are below the average of the past five years.

"We've done a good job of getting gas into storage and that will help, but gas prices will be significantly higher than they were in the past couple of years," said Chris Schoenherr, of Madison-based Alliant Energy Corp.

Wisconsin Public Service Corp. in Green Bay reported earlier that its customers had a 57 percent rise in heating bills in December, compared with last year, amounting to an extra $50 for a typical customer.

http://www.gazetteextra.com/gasprices120700.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 07, 2000


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