SC attorney general questions utility that raised gas rates nearly 50%

CLINTON — A week after his office said a rural utility’s nearly 50 percent rate hike during last month’s bitter cold fell short of being price gouging, Attorney General Alan Wilson is now asking the Clinton-Newberry Natural Gas Authority to explain why it raised rates.

Some customers were billed hundreds of dollars more than in past months, at times being charged twice as much in bills reviewed by The Post and Courier. The utility said costs rose tremendously last month as production became strained and demand spiked when two massive winter storms struck in back-to-back weekends.

This came when national usage soared as ice and snow fell across much of the country. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said the week ending Jan. 30 had the biggest drawdown in natural gas stores the nation has seen since it started releasing the Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report in 2010.

Dozens of incensed customers contacted Wilson’s office about the massive rate hike.

“I need to better understand CNNGA’s decision to increase natural gas rates, including CNNGA’s awareness of supply disruptions and increased demand,” Wilson wrote Feb. 19 in a letter to Clinton Mayor Randy Randall, who chairs the utility.

He also said he wants to know what the utility, which serves more than 14,000 homes and businesses across Laurens, Newberry and Spartanburg counties, is doing for those who can’t pay the latest bill.

“Please provide this office with a narrative as well as any relevant documentation which CNNGA relied on in concluding that a rate increase of this magnitude was necessary,” wrote Wilson, who is running as a Republican candidate for governor.

He gave Randall a deadline of March 6 to respond.

When contacted last week, spokesperson Robert Kittle said the Attorney General’s Office wasn’t investigating the rate increase “because this does not fit our state law’s definition of price gouging.”

CNNGA was far from the only utility to pass significant costs to customers. Other public utilities — including the small Upstate cities of Union and Fountain Inn — announced similar temporary increases, with ratepayers pushing back.

Responding to a post on social media announcing Union’s rate increase, one person wrote: “A 50% markup without notice during freezing weather. That doesn’t sound right.”

Fountain Inn limited comments on Facebook posts, cautioning its more than 13,000 customers that it was experiencing a high call volume after sending out bills.

Piedmont Natural Gas, the Upstate’s largest natural gas provider, said it has not “made any gas cost adjustments or changes to customer rates in response to the recent winter weather.”

It was not clear if Wilson would ask similar questions of other natural gas providers. His office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.