| Overview: The Minnesota Public Utilities
Commission (PUC) has been studying the issue of restructuring and
unbundling of retail natural gas sales for several years. In April 1995,
Minnegasco, the largest local distribution company (LDC) in the State with
52 percent of the residential business, filed a proposal that included a
plan to aggregate small customers who could then choose their natural gas
supplier. That proposal was rejected by the PUC because of unaddressed
concerns such as who, if anyone, would be the supplier of last resort,
whether system reliability would be affected, and the amount and recovery
method for stranded costs. In October 1997, a docket was issued convening
a study group, followed by an August 1998 order asking the group to
develop a statewide natural gas unbundling plan within a year. In May
1999, the PUC closed the natural gas unbundling investigation (docket
number G-999/CI-99-687) to free the regulatory and energy participants to
develop a comprehensive gas and electric utility restructuring/unbundling
plan in time for consideration by the 2001 legislature. In September 2000,
the Minnesota Department of Commerce noted that it was not in the public
interest to restructure gas or electric utility regulation substantially
at this time, but rather to place emphasis on energy reliability. New
energy legislation passed in 2001 did not address natural gas unbundling,
but instead focused on energy conservation and efficiency measures and
reliability. According to the PUC, no further work has been done to develop retail gas unbundling programs in Minnesota. However, the State's two largest gas utilities have developed fixed-bill programs. |
| EIA State Data: In 2005, Minnesota had 1,364,237 residential and 126,310 commercial customers. They consumed 129 and 96 billion cubic feet of natural gas, respectively. The average prices paid for natural gas purchased from local distribution companies by residential and commercial customers were $11.21 and $10.16 per thousand cubic feet, respectively. |