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By Chris Brown

City’s natural gas rate jumps again, electricity up slightly

Jun 1, 2022 | 10:12 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – One month after the city’s floating natural gas rate was briefly over $8 per gigajoule it’s back up there again – and even higher than the initial May rate.

On May 2, the City of Medicine Hat set the rate at $8.546 per gigajoule (GJ), in the middle of the $8.885 set by Apex (formerly AltaGas) and the $8.237 set by Direct Energy. A few days later, prices across the province were adjusted and the city rate went down to $6.441.

Today the city announced the June natural gas rate has been set at $8.699, between the $9.361 set by Apex (formerly AltaGas) and the $8.037 set by Direct Energy.

The fixed-rate for 2022 is $4.35 per GJ, as of Jan. 1.

The city website has records going back to January 2018. The highest natural gas price in that period was set in November 2021 when the commodity cost was $5.354 per GJ. The lowest price was $0.2945 in July 2019.

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In June 2021, natural gas was priced at $3.292 for city customers.

The floating electricity rate is also increasing this month.

Electricity customers on the floating rate will pay 11.699 cents per kilowatt-hour this month, up from 10.184 cents per kilowatt-hour in May.

The fixed-rate offered by the city is 8 cents per kilowatt-hour for 2022.

The electricity price falls between the high of 12.066 cents set by Epcor (Edmonton) and the low of 10.982 cents set by Direct Energy.