Coming soon: a ton of bricks

As cold weather approaches, those of us who use natural gas for heating our homes and businesses will soon feel the chilling effects of the second increase in gas prices by National Fuel Gas in a little over a year totaling nearly 20 percent. Naturally, this last hike went into effect in the midst of a hot summer when we use very little heating gas in order to escape our immediate notice. But come December and beyond, it’ll hit us like a ton of bricks.

This impending disaster reminds me of the ludicrous attempt the Buffalo,NY-based NFG made a little over a year ago at the threshhold of summer when it announced it would impose a surcharge for those who consumed less gas during the upcoming summer. A blizzard of protests organized by the indomitable Ken Springirth fell upon the land.

In defense of this indefensible outrage, Nancy Taylor, NFG’s mouthpiece in Buffalo wrote a letter to the editor of the Erie Times-News attempting to rationalize this unheard of practice of imposing a surcharge on consumers for reducing their gas consumption in order to lower their gas bills. (Company maintains new charge is fair, June 30). Her glib corporate spin only succeeded in generating what natural gas normally does when combusted, more hot air.

I sent in a letter to the Times-News responding to Taylor’s hemmorhagic spiel. But the powers that be, following in lock step their penchant for withholding the other side of the story, refused to print it, allowing Taylor’s corporate fibs to go unchallenged.

Taylor said the surcharge was needed to cover the company’s fixed overhead costs. And in a classic example of corporate doublespeak, she maintained that the surcharge actually would save gas customers money.

According to Taylor, 70 percent of what customers pay on their gas bills covers the cost of the gas which distributors like NFG obtain from suppliers. The other 30 percent, she said, goes towards fixed expenses like “construction equipment, vehicles, pipe, meters, office supplies, people, billing and computer systems to name some.”

Among those she neglected to name are obscene executive salaries and perks such as hers (as NFG’s senior manager of corporate communications - read “spin doctor”), coupled with the company’s bloated profits and shareholder dividends which greedily feed off the backs of the less affluent. “Reduced usage,” she asserted, “means a lower natural gas supply charge, period.” Duh. Not if a surcharge is applied to it!

Taylor said “If you turn back your thermostat and install a new furnace, you will still experience real savings.” What escaped her surreal logic was the fact that turning back the thermostat to many consumers meant suffering in their homes through sub-normal cold, while the cost of installing a new furnace for many is prohibitive, especially in light of the already prohibitive gas prices.

Taylor bewailed what she claimed are the “limited profits” of “a regulated utility,” (better known as a monopoly, like the one held by the Times Publishing Co.), but conveniently neglected to say how much profit NFG amasses, a tightly-held “proprietary” secret. NFG’s creative accounting practices are so labyrinthine that I don’t believe even Ken could unravel its true profit stream. Taylor also ignored the fact that the state Public Utilities Commission, the supposed consumer guardian, is a subservient tool of the natural gas industry, typically rubber-stamping its proposed rate hikes, a classic example of the tail wagging the dog.

To demonstrate NFG’s cost-effective practices, Taylor said since 1990 the company had cut 40 percent of its labor force. Which merely suggests to me that some or all of its pre-1990 labor force was redundant and cost-inefficient. She stated: “Our proposed conservation rider (surcharge) is not something new in the utility business.” But she didn’t offer a single example of another one anywhere, merely citing the endorsements of gas industry trade groups. Taylor’s twisted rhetoric characterized the surcharge as a “consumer-friendly rate tool.” With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Due to the efforts of Ken Springirth and other dedicated consumer advocates like him, NFG eventually backed away from its untenable proposal, but no thanks to the Times-News.