Not Unexpected

   Indeed, it wasn't. Saskatchewan's Crown owned natural gas company SaskEnergy has been given final approval by the provincial cabinet for a rate hike which will add an average of $9.57 a month to most bills. And the brutally cold winter we just came out of is to blame.
   A seemingly endless succession of one polar vortex after another gave us one of the coldest winters in decades. It was certainly one of the coldest I've been through in a long, long time. What it meant was, of course, record demand for home heating and business applications. To the point where natural caverns where the utility stores the commodity for winter were almost emptied.
   It got to the point where they were contemplating asking the industrial sector to cut back on their use to ensure there was enough for heating. Another factor was simple increased demand due to the influx of people into the province.
   All that meant SaskEnergy had to shop on the spot for natural gas at a higher rate, and that's what's being passed on to us.
   In this province, we have the option to pay spot prices by the month, or go on equalized billing, which spreads the pain evenly throughout the year. We've been on equalized billing since we moved back to Saskatchewan in 1997. And while it does mean we pay more in the summer, it also means we don't have to come up with 2 or 3 hundred dollars for the monthly heating bill in winter.

TTFN