PG&E monthly gas bills could soon soar

In a long-delayed aftershock of the 2010 San Bruno pipeline blast, the amount of money Pacific Gas and Electric Co. collects from customers each year to upgrade its natural gas network could soar 83 percent by the end of 2017, under two proposed decisions from California regulators.

In the first year, the average household would pay about 11 percent more per month for natural gas service, according to the California Public Utilities Commission, which issued the proposed decisions late Thursday.

Following the San Bruno explosion, which killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes, PG&E submitted a request in December 2013 to raise the amount it would collect for pipeline work over three years — 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The decisions also would make PG&E shareholders, not utility customers, liable for $164 million in extra expenses caused by the delay in the case.

After the massive Porter Ranch natural gas leak near Los Angeles, which did not involve PG&E, one of the proposed decisions directs PG&E to report on the safety and inspections of its own gas storage facilities.

The company’s critics, meanwhile, were unimpressed, saying the proposals would force PG&E customers to pay for fixing the utility’s long-running mismanagement of its gas system.

The PUC must finally make sure and guarantee that PG&E is improving gas system safety, and not diverting money into bonuses and profits as it had done in the past.

“The big issue in the case is not whether the (pipeline) projects are worth doing,” said Tom Long, legal director for The Utility Reform Network consumer group.