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By Chris Brown

Fixed rate is 50 per cent less

Natural gas rate spikes in May to more than 8 cents per gigajoule

May 2, 2022 | 10:33 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The cost of natural gas for Hatters on the floating rate is nearly doubling this month to a price that hasn’t been seen since at least 2017.

The City of Medicine released its May utility rates today, with the natural gas rate set at $8.546 per gigajoule (GJ), up from $4.594 last month.

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.

One year ago natural gas was priced at $3.2405 for city customers.

The city sets its monthly rates based on the average set by other providers in the province.

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The natural gas price is in the middle of the $8.885 set by Apex (formerly AltaGas) and the $8.237 set by Direct Energy.

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

The floating electricity rate is down this month.

Electricity customers on the floating rate will pay 10.184 cents per kilowatt-hour this month, down from 10.628 cents per kilowatt-hour in April.

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

The electricity price falls between the high of 10.462 cents set by Epcor (Edmonton) and the low of 9.971 cents set by Enmax.