CenterPoint customers to see higher gas bills

CenterPoint Energy customers will pay higher natural gas bills beginning next month.

The 99-cent increase, which CenterPoint disclosed Tuesday, will raise the residential customer charge to $18.38 from $17.39 and will help the company recoup $13.8 million in capital costs. It will become effective May 3. Non-residential customers will pay as much as $23.22 more per month.

The larger bills, CenterPoint said, cover additional 2020 capital costs, but not any expenses related to the February power crisis.

The company, however, has said customers eventually can expect higher bills to cover costs incurred during the winter storm, when frozen natural gas lines contributed to the statewide power shortage.

Natural gas prices surged during the storm as brutally cold temperatures and widespread power outages caused demand to soar. Railroad Commission of Texas officials in February said they would work with natural gas utilities to prevent customers from receiving unusually high bills because of the freeze.

CenterPoint earlier this year said fourth-quarter profit rose 27 percent to $200 million from $157 million compared with the same quarter in 2019. Revenue rose slightly, to $2.05 billion from $2.02 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019.

For the year, CenterPoint said it lost $773 million, compared with a $791 million profit in 2019. Annual revenue declined by about 2 percent to $7.42 billion from $7.56 billion.